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DEVELOPING HISTORY
At least seven people have been killed and hundreds injured after a magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck near the town of Majene on the island of Sulawesi.
At least three people have been killed and hundreds injured after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia’s Sulawesi island in the early hours of Friday morning, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said, adding that the West Sulawesi provincial building and a hotel had also collapsed.
The epicenter of the quake was six kilometers (3.73 miles) northeast of the town of Majene, at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).
Several thousand panicked residents fled their homes to safety after the earthquake, which did not trigger a tsunami warning but was felt strongly for about seven seconds, the statement said.
Images and videos uploaded show damaged buildings and several people trapped in collapsed structures.
The Disaster Mitigation Agency said a hotel and the governor’s office in West Sulawesi were also badly damaged and the electricity supply was also down.
A few hours earlier, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake had struck the same neighborhood, damaging several houses.
Straddling the so-called “ring of fire” of the Pacific, Indonesia, an archipelago with strong tectonic activity, is regularly struck by earthquakes.
In 2018, a devastating magnitude 6.2 earthquake and tsunami struck the town of Palu, further north in Sulawesi, killing thousands.
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