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Moderate quake occurs off Sumatra, no casualty
A moderate undersea earthquake struck just off the western coast of Sumatra on Saturday, a meteorological official said.
A moderate undersea earthquake struck just off the western coast of Sumatra on Saturday, a meteorological official said.
There were no immediate reports of damage and a tsunami alert was not issued.
The 5.6-magnitude quake struck deep below the surface of the Indian Ocean, and about 77 kilometres southwest of Banda Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra island, said Tri Haryono, an official at the local meteorological and geophysics agency.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheavals due to its location on the so-called Pacific 'Ring of Fire', a string of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific basin.
A 9.1-magnitude earthquake on December 26, 2004 off the coast of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed more than 1,31,000 people in Aceh province, and more than 1,00,000 others in nearly a dozen other countries.
