Strong earthquake shakes Indonesia's main island; no tsunami alert

A strong earthquake shook parts of Indonesia's main island of Java on Saturday, causing panic and sending people into the streets, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. Officials said there was no danger of a tsunami.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 5.7 and said it was centred about 18 kilometers southeast of Banjar, a city between West Java and Central Java provinces, at a depth of 112 kilometers.

A magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Nov. 21 killed at least 331 people and injured nearly 600 in West Java's Cianjur city.

It was the deadliest quake in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed about 4,340 people.

Dwikorita Karnawati, head of Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency, said there was no danger of a tsunami but warned of possible aftershocks.

The agency put a preliminary magnitude at 6.4.

Variations in early measurements are common.

High-rises in Jakarta, the capital, swayed for more than 10 seconds and some ordered evacuations, sending streams of people into the streets. Even two-story homes shook in Central Java's cities of Kulon Progo, Bantul, Kebumen and Cilacap.

Earthquakes occur frequently across the sprawling archipelago nation, but it is uncommon for them to be felt in Jakarta.

The country of more than 270 million people is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin known as the Ring of Fire.

In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia's Aceh province.