Two magnitude-6.3 earthquakes in southern Asia struck eight hours apart yesterday, causing panic but little damage in a region still traumatized by last month's quake-triggered tsunami that killed tens of thousands.
A pre-dawn quake centered under Indonesia's Sulawesi island -- far to the east of where the much more powerful magnitude-9.0 temblor struck on Dec. 26 -- sent thousands of people running to higher ground in the city of Palu.
The epicenter of the earthquake was on land -- unlike last month's quake -- and caused no tsunami. About 30 wooden houses and some shops were damaged, police said.
"They were shouting `water, water' because they feared waves," said Dr. Riri Lamadjido, a physician at the city's main Undata Hospital, which received no injured patients as a result of the quake.
Later yesterday, panic briefly spread through the streets of the Indian coastal city of Madras after residents felt an earthquake centered in the Bay of Bengal, near the Andaman Islands.
Police said no damage or injuries were reported, but people could be seen running in the city after it was jolted.
Samuel Cherian, the senior police officer in Campbell Bay, the southernmost island in the Andaman archipelago, said: "I was sitting in my office upstairs this morning at 10:45 when I felt a sudden jolt. My sentry downstairs also felt it. But there is no damage to property or life."
The 6.3-magnitude quake hit near the islands at 9:52am, seismologists at the Hong Kong Observatory said. The epicenter was about 1,740km southeast of Calcutta.
The US Geological Survey reported that the earlier quake in Sulawesi, which occurred at 4:10am yesterday, also registered a magnitude of 6.3.
Further reflecting the jitters in the region less than a month after the disaster, thousands of people in western Thailand fled their homes early yesterday after rumors spread that an earthquake had cracked four major dams, which were about to burst.
The governor of Kanchanaburi province -- which was not hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami -- went on the radio and the head of the government agency in charge of dams held a news conference to try to reassure people that the rumors were false and urge them to return home.
The Dec. 26 quake off Indonesia's western Sumatra island triggered waves that killed anywhere from 162,000 to 228,000 people in 11 countries around the Indian Ocean.
Meanwhile, UN officials said the number of relief camps in Indonesia's Aceh province has dropped by about 75 percent in the past week.
Also see story:
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS