JAKARTA (Bernama): At least 16 houses near Mount Argopuro were damaged following an earthquake that shook part of East Java.
According to Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), the tremors caused minor structural damage, including cracked walls, in houses located in Tiris district, Probolinggo regency.
"No casualties have been reported so far. However, authorities continue to monitor the situation closely due to ongoing aftershocks,” said BNPB spokesperson Abdul Muhari in a statement on Saturday.
Residents in both Probolinggo and neighboring Lumajang regencies experienced 10 earthquakes between 1.02 am and 6.48 am, with the first quake at magnitude 3.0 recorded at 1.02 am, at a depth of 10 kilometres.
The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) reported a further magnitude 2.4 tremor at 8.47 pm, with the epicentre located 19 kilometres southwest of Probolinggo at a depth of seven kilometres.
Indonesia, an archipelagic nation made of thousands of islands, has been frequently hit by earthquakes for its position on a vulnerable quake-jolted area called "the Pacific Ring of Fire."
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake on November 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.
