JAKARTA (Xinhua): A 5.7-magnitude under-land earthquake struck off Indonesia's western North Sumatra province on Sunday, the country's meteorology and geophysics agency said.
The tremors occurred at 04:37am Jakarta time (2137 GMT Saturday) with its epicenter being 17 km southwest of North Tapanuli (Tapanuli Utara) regency at a depth of 131 km under-earth, the agency reported.
The quake's intensity registered at III MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) in Central Tapanuli (Tapanuli Tengah) regency and Gunungsitoli town, it said.
Indonesia, an archipelagic nation made of thousands of islands, has been frequently hit off by earthquakes for its position on a vulnerable quake-jolted area called "the Pacific Ring of Fire."
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Nov 21 killed at least 331 people and injured nearly 600 in West Java’s Cianjur city. It was the deadliest in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed about 4,340 people.
In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province. - Xinhua
