(3-28-2005) 4:32PM EST - Washington, DC.

The FBI announced this afternoon that it has ruled-out terrorism as a cause of today’s magnitude 8.7 earthquake that rumbled off the northwestern coast of Indonesia.

“While the cause of the earthquake is yet to be determined,” the U.S. government’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a bulletin on its Web site issued almost three hours after the quake, “the FBI had already ruled out terrorism as a cause as early as last Friday.” The U.S. Geological Survey is still investigating the cause of the massive earthquake.

Calls to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III were not immediately returned.