12 February,2009 11:48 AM IST | | Agencies
A powerful earthquake struck off eastern Indonesia early today, briefly triggering fears of a tsunami. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The US Geological Survey said the 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 1.34 am (local time) about 315 kilometers from Manado, the northernmost city on Sulawesi island.
It was centered 35 kilometers beneath the ocean floor, the agency said. Five aftershocks measuring more than magnitude 5 followed.
The Indonesian Agency for Meteorology and Geophysics said the quake had the power to trigger a tsunami, but the warning was lifted about an hour later.
The agency received no reports from the field of injuries or damage, according to Soehardjono, who heads the agency's earthquake section in the capital.
Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
In December 2004, a massive earthquake off the western island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that battered much of the Indian Ocean coastline and killed more than 230,000 people u2014 more than half of them in Indonesia's Aceh province. A tsunami off Java in 2007 killed nearly 5,000.
