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Karachi could be “wiped out” by a tsunami, officials said Wednesday after a drill simulating a major earthquake in the Indian Ocean. The test and one carried out a day earlier, simulating another quake off Indonesia, were designed to check an early-warning system set up after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people. The exercise organised by the United Nations was based on a hypothetical 9.0-magnitude quake in the Makran Trench, where the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, off the coast of Pakistan. “This would create waves of 0.9 to seven metres high (3-23 feet) that could reach Karachi in one and a half hours,” Tauseef Alam, the chief meteorologist who was supervising the tests, told a foreign news agency. “This could wipe out the city as the waves would be immensely powerful.” Karachi was hit by a tsunami in 1945 that killed at least 4,000 people, Alam said. A repeat would likely have a devastating effect on Pakistan nationall