He occurred near the city of Cianjur, some 100 kilometers south of Djakarta and was felt even in the capital.
Mo12345lemonde with AFP
Nearly twenty people were killed and at least 300 were injured on Monday, November 21 in an earthquake that hit Java Island in Indonesia, reported a most affected city official in local media. “According to the information I have for the moment, in this single hospital, nearly twenty people are dead and at least 300 are processed. Most have fractures after being stuck in the rubble of buildings,” said Herman Suherman, Head of the Administration of the City of Cianjur, at the Metro TV.
The epicenter was located near the city of Cianjur, where several buildings were collapsed, about 100 kilometers south of Djakarta. “We call on people to stay outside the buildings for the moment, since there could be possible replicas,” the director of the Indonesian meteorology agency, Dwikorita Karnawati, told journalists.
Jakarta tremor also
The earthquake was felt even in the capital, according to journalists from the France-Presse agency on site. No victim or significant damage to Djakarta was reported immediately, but people rushed outside the buildings.
According to the Institute of Geological Studies of the United States (USGS), the magnitude of the earthquake had been estimated at 5.4, against 5.6, according to the geophysics agency in Indonesia.
Indonesia is located on the “fire belt” of the Pacific, which earned it to be the prey of frequent earthquakes. In 2018, the island of Lombok and the neighboring island of Sumbawa had been struck by a violent earthquake which had left more than 550 dead.
The same year, another earthquake of a magnitude of 7.5 had caused a tsunami, which had struck Palu, on the island of Sulawesi (Celebes Islands), causing the death or disappearance of 4,300 people.
The island of Java, for its part, was affected by an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 in 2006, near the city of Yogyakarta (center), causing around 6,000 dead and tens of thousands of injured.
A year earlier, an earthquake of magnitude 8.7 striking the coast of Sumatra, regularly touched, had killed more than 900 people.
But the country remains marked by the earthquake of December 26, 2004 with a magnitude of 9.1 off the coast of Sumatra. He had caused an important tsunami who had led to the death of 220,000 people throughout the region, including 170,000 for Indonesia alone, one of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded.