JAKARTA, Indonesia — A strong earthquake jolted eastern Indonesia today, panicking residents, but no major damage was immediately reported.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured magnitude-6.7 and was centered 67 miles north of Dobo in Maluku province, at a depth of 15 miles. It was followed by two aftershocks both measuring magnitude-4.9. Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency put the preliminary magnitude at 7.0 and said there was no tsunami.
A district government office in Dobo, the closest village to the epicenter, sustained some damage but the extent was unclear, said agency official Subagyo, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. A giant quake off the country on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people, half of them in Indonesia’s westernmost province of Aceh.
