A powerful magnitude 7.4 earthquake has struck in the Molucca Sea region northeast of Indonesia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The quake, which hit early Thursday local time, had a depth of nearly 22 miles and its epicenter was 79 miles west-northwest of Ternate, Indonesia, the USGS said.<\/p>\n
The U.S. tsunami warning system said tsunami waves were possible in neighboring countries.<\/p>\n\n
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The U.S. Geological Surveys says that a powerful magnitude 7.4 earthquake has struck in the Molucca Sea region northeast of Indonesia.<\/span><\/p>\n
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USGS<\/p>\n
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Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 280 million people, sits on major seismic faults and is frequently hit by earthquakes<\/span> and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.<\/p>\n
In 2022<\/span>, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake killed at least 602 people in West Java’s Cianjur city, the deadliest one in Indonesia since a 2018 quake<\/span> and tsunami in Sulawesi killed more than 4,300 people.<\/p>\n
In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province.<\/p>\n\n<\/section>\n
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