Earthquake of magnitude 6.1 rocks Indonesia’s Java

A strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the southern part of Indonesia’s main island of Java on Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injury or significant property damage.

The US Geological Survey said the quake struck 102 kilometers (63 miles) south of Banjar city at a depth of 68.3 kilometers (42.4 miles). There was no tsunami warning.

High-rises in the capital Jakarta swayed for around a minute and two-story homes shook strongly in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung and in Jakarta’s satellite cities of Depok, Tangerang, Bogor and Bekasi. The quake was also felt in other cities in West Java, Yogyakarta and East Java province, according to Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency.

The agency warned of possible aftershocks.

Earthquakes are frequent across the sprawling archipelago nation, but they are rarely felt in Jakarta.

Indonesia, a seismically active archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on major geological faults known as the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”

A magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2022 killed at least 602 people in West Java’s Cianjur city. It was the deadliest in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed more than 4,300 people.

In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province.