Indonesian quake kills man, new-born baby, injures 5

Jan 22, 2007, 5:10 GMT

Jakarta - Indonesian officials said Monday that two people were killed and five injured from a strong earthquake and aftershocks the previous night on the eastern island of Sulawesi.

One man died of a heart attack, while a baby died in the process of being delivered because the mother was shocked and frightened when the quake struck, according to officials in the North Sulawesi provincial capital of Manado.

Mongkaren, head of the province's disaster mitigation agency, said three people were struck by collapsing walls, while two others were seriously injured after jumping from the second floor of a shopping mall in Manado.

A police official in Manado, 2,100 kilometres north-east of Jakarta, who identified himself only as Benny, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone that overall the quake had caused minimum damage, including small cracks on walls and broken window panels.

The tremblor, measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale, shook Manado and nearby regions late Sunday, prompting panicky residents to run out of their homes and from buildings. The geophysics agency warned that a tsunami was possible, but within an hour alerted the public that one had not occurred.

According to the US Geological Survey, the quake measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, and its epicentre was in the Maluku Sea, about 160 kilometres south-east of Manado.

A number of aftershocks from the quake continued to rattle the province on Monday. The strongest, with a magnitude of 6.0, struck around 3:50 a.m. Monday, said Bayu, an official at Jakarta's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.

Sunday's tremblor was the latest in a series of natural disasters - earthquakes, landslides, floods - to rock Indonesia in recent weeks.

Indonesia is located in the Pacific volcanic belt known as the 'Ring of Fire,' where earthquakes and volcano eruptions are common.

A massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra Island in December 2004 triggered a tsunami that killed some 177,000 people in Aceh province. In July 2006, another quake-triggered tsunami killed more than 600 people along the southern coast of Java Island.