Tsunami panic as quake strikes Indonesia

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake rocked a 1,240-mile swathe of Indonesia for two minutes, sending panicked residents fleeing to higher ground, fearful of a tsunami.

There were no immediate reports of a tsunami, injuries or serious damage.

The quake struck deep beneath the Banda Sea about 120 miles south of Ambon city in the Maluku Islands, the US Geological Survey said on its website.

Hundreds of people ran from their homes in some Maluku cities and in the tiny nation of East Timor, 270 miles to the south, said residents contacted by telephone.

“We poured into the streets in panic and ran immediately to higher places fearing a tsunami,” said Salman Rumalesin, a resident of Bula, a Maluku mining town.

The quake caused cracks in some buildings in Ambon as well as in the Timor Hotel in Dili, the capital of East Timor, witnesses said.

“In addition to Ambon and other towns in Maluku, the quake also was felt in Sorong, Kupang, Waingapu, Makassar and Bali,” Jusuf, an official at Indonesia’s meteorological agency who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told the Associated Press.

Kupang and Waingapu are in the East Nusa Tenggara province while Makassar is in South Sulawesi.

The quake struck at 1.58am local time Saturday (4.58pm Irish time yesterday) at a depth of 212 miles, according to the US Geological Survey.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location atop a volcanically active region known as the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

A magnitude-9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on St Stephen's Day 2004, killed more than 131,000 people in Indonesia’s western Aceh province on Sumatra island, and left half a million homeless.

Three months later another strong tremor killed more than 900 on Nias and smaller surrounding islands, also in western Indonesia.

Ambon is about 1,600 miles east of Jakarta.