HONIARA, Solomon Islands — A bone-rattling undersea earthquake sparked a tsunami that sent 10-foot-high waves crashing into parts of the Solomon Islands today, wiping out one village and killing at least 13 people. The death toll was expected to rise.

Large waves struck the western town of Gizo, inundating buildings and causing widespread destruction within five minutes of the earthquake.

"There wasn't any warning — the warning was the earth tremors," Alex Lokopio, the premier of the Solomon's Western Province, told New Zealand's National Radio. "It shook us very, very strongly and we were frightened, and all of a sudden the sea was rising up."

Despite initial regionwide warnings, there was no repeat of the massive 2004 tsunami, when a magnitude 9 quake sent massive waves slamming into the coastlines of a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean's rim, killing or leaving missing about 230,000 people.

Julian Makaa, spokesman for the Solomons National Disaster Management Office, said numerous villages in the country's remote west were reporting people being swept away as waves plowed through their communities.

Reports remained sketchy because communications were reduced in many cases to scratchy two-way radio lines. Emergency officials have yet to be able to reach the area hit by the tsunami and communications with the area is limited.

Alfred Maesulia, the information director in Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare's office, said late Monday that 13 people had been killed and an unknown number were still missing.

"Some people were seen floating on the sea during the big waves but it was very difficult to go near them," Maesulia said. "The number at the moment is 13. It's possible that number will increase, maybe double up or even more."

Lokopio said he witnessed a large wave crashing into the island.

"I saw the wave ... all of a sudden the water was just rising up and moved toward the island and hit all the houses on the coastal area, and all of their property was washed away to the open sea," he said.

Julian McLeod of the Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office said there were unconfirmed reports that two villages in the country's far west were flooded.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured magnitude-8.0 and struck at 7:39 a.m. about 6 miles beneath the sea floor, 217 miles northwest of the capital, Honiara.