Indonesia issues tsunami warning after more eruption from Mount Ruang
The heightened alert was issued late on Wednesday after the 725-meter-high volcano had two large eruptions earlier in the day, spewing a column of ash 3,000 metres into the sky.
Thirteen people were killed when a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the island of Lombok in Indonesia, a popular tourist destination, the country’s disaster mitigation agency has said.
The quake reportedly struck at 6.47 a.m., and its epicentre was located 50 km north-east of the city of Mataram on the island of Lombok, which has a population of 319,000, the Guardian reported.
Lombok in southeastern Indonesia is a popular tourist destination, and lies around 100 km east of the resort island of Bali.
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At least two dozen others were injured in the earthquake, and one house was badly damaged in North Lombok.
Tourists near Senggigi, gateway to the popular Gili Islands resorts, reported strong shocks.
“We jumped out of our beds to avoid anything falling on our heads,” said Jean-Paul Volckaert who was woken by the quake in the Puncak hotel.
“We were very surprised as the water in the pools was swaying like a wild sea. There were waves in the pools but only for 20 to 30 seconds,” he said, adding that there was no damage to the hotel.
Island authorities have temporarily closed the hiking trails on Mount Rinjani amid fears of landslides after the quake.
No tsunami alert was issued, said Hary Tirto Djatmiko, spokesman for Indonesia’s geophysics and meteorology agency, but more than more than 40 aftershocks were recorded.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a zone of high seismic and volcanic activity, that experiences around 7,000 tremors mostly of moderate intensity every year.
In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
(With inputs from agencies)
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