By DPA,
Jakarta : Indonesia issued a tsunami warning shortly after midnight Sunday after a powerful earthquake struck off the country’s north Sulawesi province, Indonesian seismologists said.
The National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said the quake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck at about 00:02 a.m. Monday.
Its epicentre was at a depth of about 10 km under the sea about 138 northwest of Gorontalo in North Sulawesi, the agency said in a short message.
There were no immediate reports of injury and structural damage.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, the edge of a tectonic plate prone to seismic upheaval.
A major earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck in December 2004, leaving more than 170,000 people dead or missing and around 500,000 homeless in Indonesia’s Aceh province.