Jakarta — A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Indonesia on Sunday, said the U.S. Geological Survey.
The 6.3-magnitude quake was centered 343 kilometers (212) miles northwest of Saumlaki, a coastal town in Maluku province, at a depth of 9 kilometers (5.5 miles) beneath the sea.
It was centered approximately 212 miles (340 kilometers) west-northwest of Saumlaki in Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands, 217 miles east-northeast of Dili, Timor-Leste, and 226 miles of Ambon, Indonesia.
Indonesian officials say they had not received any reports of casualties or damage so far.
“From data, the epicentre is quite a distance from the nearest cities and the intensity of shaking is not destructive,” said Suharjono, the technical head of Indonesia’s geophysics and meteorology agency.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre did not issue any alerts following the tremor in the remote region at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago between the islands of Timor and New Guinea, said reports.
In 2004, a monster temblor off Indonesia’s Aceh shores triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. Most of the deaths were in Aceh.
The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.