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-AgenturCOMMENT
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