An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 shakes Indonesia’s Java island, felt in Jakarta
Earthquake (representative image; photo credit: Shutterstock)
A strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the southern part of Indonesia’s main island of Java on Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or significant property damage.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 102 kilometers (63 miles) south of the town of Banjar at a depth of 68.3 kilometers (42.4 miles). There was no tsunami warning.
High-rise buildings in the capital Jakarta swayed for about a minute and two-story houses shook violently in West Java’s provincial capital Bandung and in the satellite cities of Depok, Tangerang, Bogor and Bekasi. According to the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency, the earthquake was also felt in other cities in West Java, Yogyakarta and East Java province.
The agency warned of possible aftershocks.
Earthquakes are common across the vast archipelago, but they are rarely felt in Jakarta.
Indonesia, a seismically active archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to seismic unrest due to its location on major geological fault lines known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2022 killed at least 602 people in the city of Cianjur, West Java. It was the deadliest in Indonesia since a 2018 earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed more than 4,300 people.
In 2004, an extremely powerful earthquake in the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
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First print: April 27, 2024 | 11:41 PM IST