Asia-Pacific News

Moderate earthquake jolts Indonesia's Papua province

Mar 3, 2007, 10:07 GMT

Jakarta(dpa) - A moderate earthquake jolted Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua on Saturday, causing damage to houses and a TV tower, an official report said. The quake, measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale, occurred at around 01:04 p.m. local time (0404 GMT), according to a report from Indonesia's national Meteorology and Geophysics Agency. The tremblor's epicentre was on land, 67 kilometres south-east of Manokwari regency and about 33 kilometres underground. The Papua province lies about 3,090 kilometres east of Indonesia's capital Jakarta. In December 2004, a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that struck nine Asian and African countries, killing around 177,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone. In July 2006, another quake-triggered tsunami killed more than 600 people along the southern coast of Java. Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, is prone to earthquakes because of its location on an arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches encircling the Pacific Basin. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Asia-Pacific News

Moderate earthquake jolts Indonesia's Papua province

On the Web

Your Talkback on this Story

Similar articles

Latest Headlines in Asia-Pacific

Older Talkback

Like M&C on Facebook

Viral Web

In Monsters and Critics

Corporate

The Fine Print