India on Monday unveiled a tsunami warning system designed to detect all earthquakes above a magnitude of six on the Richter scale in the Indian Ocean within 20 minutes, the government said.

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The operation has been set up at a cost of 1.25 billion rupees (32 million dollars) in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

India lost more than 16,000 people in the 2004 tsunami, which killed a total of around 220,000 people, and suffered damage estimated by the United Nations at 2.5 billion dollars.

During tests, the warning system proved to be effective when an undersea 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island on September 12, an official statement said.

The project involves a real-time network of seismic stations and six ocean bottom pressure recorders.

About 400 million people living in India's coastal belts are at risk from natural disasters, the federal ministry of science and technology said.