A series of powerful earthquakes struck off the coast of Russia’s far east on Sunday, triggering a tsunami alert, the US Geological Survey said.

Earlier 5.0-magnitude and 6.7-magnitude earthquakes did not initially trigger a tsunami alert, but were followed by a 7.4-magnitude quake at 0849 GMT (1:49pm PKT), prompting the USGS to warn that “hazardous tsunami waves are forecast for some coasts”.

The USGS said it expected waves of between 30 centimetres and one metre (up to 3.3 feet) on Russian coasts, and less than 30cm (one foot) in Japan and the US state of Hawaii.

The epicentre of the quakes was in the Pacific Ocean, around 150 kilometres east of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, it said.

The initial earthquakes were followed by several aftershocks, including another 6.7-magnitude quake, said USGS.

Russia’s emergency situations ministry wrote on Telegram that it expected waves of up to 60cm in the Commander Islands in the southwestern part of the Bering Sea, and waves of 15 to 40cm in the Kamchatka peninsula.

The peninsula is the meeting point of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates, making it a seismic hot zone.

Since 1900, seven major earthquakes of magnitude 8.3 or higher have struck the area.