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:
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS