Yogjakarta, Indonesia ? A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Central Java province early today, killing at least 309 people, injuring scores and flattening buildings.

The magnitude 6.2 quake struck 15 miles southwest of the city of Yogyakarta, causing damage and casualties there and in at least two other nearby population centers, officials said. Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, is about 18 miles from the sea and about 250 miles east of the capital, Jakarta.

In the chaos that followed the quake, rumors of an impending tsunami sent thousands of people on Java fleeing to higher ground in cars and motorbikes. But Japan’s Meteorological Agency said there was no danger of a tsunami.

Five hours after the quake struck, at least 309 bodies had been recovered, and the death toll was expected to climb, morgue officials said by telephone.

Witnesses at hospitals said hundreds of injured people were arriving for emergency treatment, many with broken bones and cuts.

TV footage showed damaged hotels and government buildings, and several collapsed buildings.

The quake cracked the runway in Yogyakarta’s airport, closing it to aircraft until at least Sunday while inspections take place, Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa said.

Electricity and communications also were down in parts of Yogyakarta, police said.

“It felt really powerful, and the whole building shook,” said Narman, a receptionist at a hotel in the city who goes by one name. “Everyone ran from their rooms.”

The quake’s epicenter was close to the Mount Merapi volcano, which has been rumbling for weeks and sending out large clouds of hot gas and ash. Many nearby residents had been evacuated earlier. Activity increased as a result of the temblor, with one eruption soon after the volcano sending debris some two miles down its western flank, said Subandrio, a vulcanologist monitoring the peak.

“The quake has disturbed the mountain,” he said.

There were no reports of injuries as a result of the eruption.

A magnitude 9.1 earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, under the sea off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island triggered a tsunami that killed more than 131,000 people in nearby Aceh province, and more than 100,000 others in nearly a dozen other countries.