At least 46 people have been killed, 40 others have gone missing and more than 400 others were wounded after a 7.3 magnitude quake hit West Java of Indonesia on Wednesday, the National Disaster Management Agency said in Jakarta.
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Graphics shows a 7.3-magnitude quake jolting Indonesia at 14:55 p.m. Jakarta time (0755 GMT) with the epicenter at 142 kilometers southwest of Tasik Malaya of West Java, Indonesia, on Sept. 2. [Xinhua]
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Head of the crisis center of the Health Ministry Rustam Pakaya told Xinhua that the number of people wounded was 422, some of them suffering from serious injury.
Forty others people were still buried by landslide in Cianjur of West Java, Pakaya said.
Over 3,000 houses were seriously damaged and nearly 1,000 other suffered from minor damages in West Java and Central Java, another official of the disaster management agency Panji Syahrial told Xinhua.
"In Cianjur of West Java, 12 houses have been buried by landslide and evacuation is underway now," he said.
A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck western parts of Indonesia on Wednesday, causing panic in some cities and potential for tsunami, but the tsunami did not occur.
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Residents take shelter outside their damaged houses in the West Java town of Sukabumi on Sept. 2, 2009. A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit West Java on Wednesday, leaving some 46 people killed, more than 400 wounded and some 40 still missing. [Xinhua]
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The quake struck at 2:55 p.m. Jakarta time (0755 GMT) with epicenter at 142 kms southwest Tasik Malaya of West Java and at 30 kms in depth, the meteorology agency said.
The intensity of the quake was felt at 5 to 6 MMI (Modified Mercally Intensity) at Puncak, 6 MMI in Sukabumi town and 3 to 4 MMI in Bandung city of West Java, 4 MMI in Jakarta and 2 MMI in Bali island, the agency said.
The USGS reported that the quake was at 7.4 magnitude on the Richter scale and at 68.2 kms under sea bed.
Indonesia with over 230 million people sits on a vulnerable quake-hit zone so called the Pacific Ring of Fire, where two continental plates meet stretching from Western hemisphere to Japan, which causes frequent seismic and volcanic movements.
