An offshore earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 hit close to jap Indonesia’s Maluku islands on Wednesday, forcing panicked residents to run into the streets and briefly triggering a tsunami warning.

There have been no fast experiences of casualties however mild injury was reported on at the least one island.

The epicentre of the tremor was situated 150 kilometres (93 miles) northwest of the jap Indonesian island of Halmahera, at a depth of 48 kilometres, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

The undersea quake occurred round 13:06 pm native time (0606 GMT) off the coast of Sulawesi island, shaking close by islands and sending some residents into the streets.

“The quake was felt round 15-20 seconds. The shakings have been fairly lengthy,” an AFP journalist on Morotai island in the Maluku archipelago said.

“Some people went outside because they were afraid of buildings collapsing.”

Abner Manery, the pinnacle of North Halmahera catastrophe mitigation company, stated some homes on Morotai have been broken.

A resident described the second the quake shook the island.

“When it hit, we rushed exterior, barely panicked,” Rizkal Fuadsamlan, 29, told AFP.

The NWS Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said in an updated warning the tsunami threat had passed.

It said earlier tsunami waves could hit coastal areas around 300 kilometres from the epicentre.

The quake was also revised down from an initial magnitude of 7.2 reported by the USGS.

Second January quake

Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), which put the magnitude at 7.1, warned of possible aftershocks.

Daryono, the head of the agency’s earthquake and tsunami centre who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said the tremor was followed by 10 aftershocks, the largest with a magnitude of 5.3.

He tweeted the quake was “triggered by (a) rock deformation in the Maluku Sea Plate”.

The preliminary quake was felt as distant as town of Gorontalo in northern Sulawesi, the place it shook homes, and the provincial capital, Manado.

A strong quake hit deep below the ocean in jap Indonesia earlier this month, rattling close by islands and damaging houses and faculties.

The 7.6-magnitude quake brought about roofs and partitions to break down in houses on the worst-hit Tanimbar Islands within the Maluku archipelago.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic exercise as a result of its place on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

A 5.6-magnitude quake hit West Java province on Indonesia’s main island of Java on November 21, killing 602 people.

Most of the victims were killed when buildings collapsed or in landslides triggered by the quake.

A 2018 quake and resulting tsunami on Sulawesi island killed more than 4,000 people.

A major earthquake off Sumatra on December 26, 2004, set off an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people as far away as Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

That powerful 9.1-magnitude quake triggered 100-foot waves that hit the shore of Banda Aceh in Sumatra.

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