A strong earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck Indonesia's Halmahera region on Friday morning, according to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).
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The quake occurred at 10:31 AM local time (02:31 UTC), with its epicenter located at 1.8° North and 127.4° East, approximately 116 km north of Ternate, Indonesia. GFZ reported the depth of the quake at 127 km (78.91 miles).
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) confirmed there was no tsunami risk.
Ternate resident Umar Abbas, who lives about 114 kilometres from the epicentre, was quoted by AFP saying, “I was sitting and having coffee at a roadside coffee stall when suddenly my chair started rocking. I panicked for a moment because I'm still traumatised by the past earthquakes.”
The tremor comes roughly two weeks after a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck central Indonesia's Sulawesi island on June 17, killing at least one person, injuring dozens and damaging homes and infrastructure in a region still recovering from a devastating quake and tsunami eight years earlier.
Indonesia sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," making it prone to frequent seismic activity.
