JAKARTA (Reuters) – A magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook Indonesia’s Java island on Saturday, killing seven people, wounding two and damaging hundreds of buildings in several cities, the country’s disaster mitigation agency BNPB said.
The Indian media reported that the earthquake was felt at 14:00 (07:00 GMT) local time across East Java, where 40.7 million people live, and in the nearby provinces, including the island of Bali.
Ten people were lightly injured, while an indefinite number of people were evacuated to evacuation centers in several villages as some homes were destroyed, the BNPB said.
More than 300 homes and dozens of other buildings, including schools, hospitals, government offices and places of worship, were damaged, the agency said.
The numbers may change as authorities gather more information on the extent of the casualties and damage.
Media images showed flattened houses in villages near the south coast of East Java, the closest area to the epicenter of the quake.
A large gorilla statue in an amusement park in the city of Batu has lost its head, reports the news website Detik.com.
The quake struck 91 km (57 miles) off the south coast of East Java in the Indian Ocean. It had a magnitude of 5.9 at a depth of 96 km, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center, which initially reduced the magnitude of the earthquake by 6.8.
The video shared by social media users showed people running a shopping mall in Malang city amid the strong quake.
“I felt the earthquake twice, the first time for two seconds, and then it stopped, but then it shook again for five seconds,” Edo Afizal, a receptionist at a hotel in Blitar, told Reuters by telephone.
Indonesia was hit last week by tropical cyclone Seroja, which caused landslides and flash floods that killed more than 170 people on the islands in the province of East Nusa Tenggara.
Indonesia is regularly hit by the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire by earthquakes. More than 100 people were killed in the 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the island of Sulawesi.
Additional reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; writing by Gayatri Suroyo; edited by William Mallard, Jason Neely and Clelia Oziel