An undersea earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale little shook parts of eastern Indonesia on Monday. There was, however, no tsunami warning or immediate reports of casualties caused by it, officials here said.The earthquake, which occurred at 11:05, was centered 69 km south of Puerto Labuha in North Maluku province.
The quake was at a depth of 10 km below the seabed, an official of the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said.
While the Hong Kong Observatory said it was an earthquake of magnitude 6.8, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) concluded that is 6.6 Richter scale.
The quake caused panic, because the patients in the North Maluku General Hospital rushed out of the house when the earthquake struck the region and have been reluctant to enter the building, television images showed.
In 2004, about 170,000 people were killed and a huge infrastructure was destroyed in the northern tip of Sumatra Island in Indonesia after the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean countries along the ocean, killing a total of 230,000 people
