Jakarta, Sep 7 (DPA) A strong earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale struck off the southern coast of the Indonesian island of Java late Monday, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage, the Indonesian seismology agency said.
The quake struck at 11.12 p.m. (1612 GMT) and was centred in the Indian Ocean, 263 kilometres south-east of Wonosari district in Central Java province, Indonesia’s National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said in a statement.
It occurred 35 kilometres beneath the seabed. The statement did not say if the quake caused a tsunami threat.
There were no immediate reports of injury or structural damage from the quake, the latest of a series of earthquakes to jolt Indonesia in recent days.
On September 2, a powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck West Java province, killing at least 74 people and leaving 34 missing and feared dead after a landslide buried alive dozens of people. Hundreds of others were injured and tens of thousands of
homes were damaged.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, sits along the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
A major earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck in December 2004, leaving more than 170,000 people dead or missing in Indonesia’s Aceh province. Half a million people were also left homeless.
