JAKARTA – A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck eastern Indonesia on Thursday morning, killing at least three people and injuring three others.
All the fatalities confirmed so far have occurred in Maluku Province and are blamed on collapsed buildings, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
The 8:46 a.m. quake occurred just off Seram, one of the main islands in the Maluku Islands, at a depth of 18 kilometers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The temblor posed no tsunami risks, Indonesia’s Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysical Agency said. But local media reported that hundreds of people fled to higher ground in Ambon, the provincial capital on the nearby island of Ambon, for fear of tsunami.
Among the structures damaged in the quake were university buildings, houses, a mosque and a church in Ambon, as well as a bridge and roads, according to authorities.
Indonesia sits in one of the most active seismic regions in the world, the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.
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