A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands region on Monday, according to data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Germany’s Centre for Georesearch (GEOFON).
The earthquake occurred at 12:49pm Western Indonesia Time (0549 GMT), with its epicentre located approximately 177 kilometres west of the city of Tual in eastern Maluku province. The tremor struck at a depth of around 66 kilometres (40 miles), the USGS said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or infrastructural damage.
Indonesia’s geophysics agency stated via social media that the quake did not have the potential to generate a tsunami. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center also confirmed that no tsunami threat was detected.
GEOFON had initially recorded the earthquake at a magnitude of 7 before revising it to 6.7.
The latest tremor adds to the long list of seismic events experienced by Indonesia, a nation frequently hit by earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” — an arc of intense seismic and volcanic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Ocean.
In recent memory, several destructive earthquakes have claimed thousands of lives in the archipelago. A 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Sulawesi in January 2021 killed over 100 people and left thousands homeless. In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake followed by a tsunami struck Palu, also on Sulawesi, killing more than 2,200 people.
One of the deadliest quakes occurred in 2004 when a magnitude-9.1 undersea earthquake off Aceh province triggered a massive tsunami, killing over 170,000 people in Indonesia alone.
Authorities continue to monitor the situation but stress that no emergency response has been required at this stage.
