Locals flee, panic as major quake shakes Indonesia
Indonesia’s disaster agency is assessing the impact of a strong earthquake that hit off the southern coast of Sumatra island, with no reports yet received of damage or casualties.
The 6.3 magnitude quake struck at 9.31pm local time (12.31am AEST), the country’s meteorology and geophysics agency (BMKG) said, adding it was too deep to trigger a tsunami.
Its epicentre was 80km south of the town of Manna in Bengkulu province, at a depth of 52km.
Manna is about 600km northwest of the capital Jakarta.
The tremor was felt for two to six seconds by residents along the southern coastline of Sumatra, prompting some to run out of their homes, disaster agency BNPB said in a statement.
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“It was quite strong,” a Bengkulu agency official said.
Indonesia straddles the so-called Pacific ‘ring of fire’, a seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.
In February, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed at least 25 people and injured more than 460 in West Sumatra province.
In January 2021, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed more than 100 people and injured nearly 6500 in West Sulawesi province.
– with The Associated Press
