MALANG, Indonesia – A strong earthquake on Saturday killed at least six people and damaged buildings on the main island of Java, Indonesia, shaking the tourist spot in Bali, officials said.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck at 14:00 local time on the south coast of the island. It was centered in waters south of the Malang district in East Java province and had a depth of 51 miles.
Falling rocks have killed a woman on a motorcycle and seriously injured her husband in the East Java Lumajang district, said Raditya Jati, a spokeswoman for the National Disaster Management Agency.
He said dozens of homes in the district were damaged, and rescuers recovered two bodies from the rubble of collapsed homes in Kali Uling district. It was also confirmed that two people were killed in an area bordering the districts of Lumajang and Malang, and one person was found dead under rubble in Malang.
According to television reports, people are running in panic from shopping malls and buildings in several cities in the province of East Java.
Indonesia’s search and rescue agency has released videos and photos of damaged homes and buildings, including a ceiling in a hospital in Blitar, a neighboring town of Malang. Authorities continued to gather information on the extent of the casualties and damage in the affected areas.
The quake was the second deadly disaster to hit Indonesia in the past week. Last Sunday, torrential rains killed at least 165 people and damaged thousands of homes as a result of tropical cyclone Seroja. Some were buried in a mudslide or solidified lava in a volcanic eruption in November, while others were swept away by flash floods.
Indonesia, a vast island group of 270 million people, is regularly hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis due to its location on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific basin.
In January, at least 105 people died in an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 and injured nearly 6,500, while more than 92,000 were displaced after hitting the districts of Mamuju and Majene in the province of Western Sulawesi.