A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok on Sunday, sending people fleeing into the streets just two weeks after a quake which killed more than 460 people.
The quake was centred west-southwest of Belanting town in East Lombok, the US Geological Survey said, at a relatively shallow depth of seven kilometres.
Residents said the earthquake was felt strongly in East Lombok.
“I was driving to deliver aid to evacuees when suddenly the electricity pole was swaying. I realised it was an earthquake.
“People started to scream and cry. They all ran to the street,” East Lombok resident Agus Salim told AFP news agency.
The Associated Press reported that the tremor caused landslides on the slopes of Mount Rinjani and panic in nearby villages.
The tremor was also felt in the island’s capital Mataram and on the neighbouring resort island of Bali.
It comes two weeks after a shallow 6.9-magnitude quake on August 5 levelled tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lombok.
Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler, reporting form the Indonesian capital Jakarta, said that many residents of the area were still psychologically recovering from previous earthquakes.
“Where this earthquake struck today. there had also been a weaker earthquake at the end of last month…so they were rattled to begin with and with this new one they are even more so,” he said.
Indonesia, an archipelago of thousands of islands, sits on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur
In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
Two series of quakes 5.2 and 6.4 m have just rocked #Lombok a few mins ago. The quakes have caused big landslides in Belanting village, East Lombok. @IFRCAsiaPacific pic.twitter.com/78UKwDbXEw
— Husni (@husni_portraits) August 19, 2018
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
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