Magnitude 6.1 quake hits Indonesia's West Java

[December 03, 2022]  JAKARTA (Reuters) -A quake of 6.1 magnitude hit Indonesia's West Java area on Saturday, the country's geophysics agency BMKG said, sending people running out of buildings.   

The quake has no tsunami potential, the agency said. It was felt in capital Jakarta, around 200 km from the epicentre.

One person was injured and four houses were damaged in the town of Garut, said Abdul Muhari, spokesperson for Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency (BNPB).

Some residents of other towns and cities in West Java said on social media they felt the quake strongly. A Reuters witness in Bandung, the capital of West Java province, said guests of a hotel ran out of the building but had since returned inside.

Last month a shallow quake of 5.6 magnitude hit West Java's Cianjur, killing more than 300.

The head of BNPB, Suharyanto, told local news channel MetroTV that authorities were still making checks in other places near the epicentre on Saturday.

"Hopefully the impact is not as bad as Cianjur because this time the epicentre is pretty deep," he told MetroTV.

The magnitude was initially reported at 6.4 with a depth of 118 km (73 miles) and was later updated with a depth of 109 km.

BMKG reported a smaller 2.9 magnitude quake at 107 km depth hit near the first quake over an hour later.

(Reporting by Fransiska Nangoy, Ananda Teresia, Angie Teo, Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by William Mallard and Ros Russell)

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