At least 29 people were injured after a powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake jolted Indonesia’s central Sulawesi, sending residents scrambling from buildings in the early hours of Sunday.
The shallow quake, striking at a depth of 1 km (6.2 miles), shook Poso Regency and was felt across nearby areas, the country’s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said.
Two people were critically injured and were receiving treatment at a hospital.
One church was reportedly damaged, and sections of another church that were under renovation gave way during the earthquake, trapping several people under the rubble.
A video from Poso shows worshippers gathered in a church singing hymns when the tremors struck. As the shaking intensified, the congregation abruptly stopped, with people screaming and rushing towards the exits in panic.
Another video captured by a surveillance camera showed intense shaking inside a grocery store.
There were no immediate reports of deaths, BNBP added.
It comes a month after a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia’s far eastern coast sent tsunami waves heading towards Japan, Hawaii and the US west coast. It was one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded and triggered alerts in China, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand and even as far as Peru, Chile and Mexico.
There were no tsunami warnings in the wake of Sunday’s earthquake.
Indonesia sits on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire“, a highly seismically active zone, where different plates on the Earth’s crust meet and create large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
More than 600 people were killed in one of the most destructive earthquakes in Indonesia in 2022 after a shallow 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck Cianjur town in West Java. More than 7,729 were injured and many remain missing to date, with more than 62,628 homes damaged across 16 districts in Cianjur Regency and the surrounding areas.
