One dead after strong quake strikes near Indonesia's Ambon

An aerial view of a devastated region nearly one year after an earthquake and tsunami, taken over Sulawesi, Indonesia, sometime in September 2019 by a drone and obtained from social media. UN OCHA Asia-Pacific via REUTERS

AMBON, Indonesia (Reuters) - At least one person died on Thursday after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit Indonesia's eastern province of Maluku, damaging buildings and sending people fleeing to the hills, officials and witnesses said.

Disaster officials said the early morning quake, initially measured at a magnitude of 6.8, woke residents of towns such as the provincial capital of Ambon, about 40 km (25 miles) from the epicentre, but the geophysics agency ruled out a tsunami.