Jakarta: A 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island Friday, the United States Geological Survey said. The shallow quake hit at 12:30 (0630 GMT) near the island of Nias, about 250 kilometres (160 miles) south of Sinabang.
An earthquake of magnitude 6.6 struck off the northwest coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Friday, the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said.
The Indonesia earthquake was at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles), GFZ said.
Indonesia’s weather and geophysics agency, BMKG, put the quake at 7.2 magnitude and at a depth of km but said it had no potential to trigger a tsunami wave.
On Dec. 26, 2004, a 9.1 magnitude quake off the coast of northwest Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries.
A Twitter user, Siska Sasmita, said Friday’s quake was felt strongly in Padang city on Sumatra’s west coast.
“We ran outside the house because the quake was felt for a pretty long time,” said Goris Tukan, a resident of Nias island, off Sumatra. He said no damage were seen in his neighbourhood.
Disaster mitigation agency official Filifo Daili said the quake was felt for 20 seconds and authorities were still collecting information about its impact.