Death toll rises to 10 after another earthquake hits Indonesia

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ASTANA. KAZINFORM - At least 10 people died and 24 were injured after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Lombok, officials said Monday, as the country reels from a series of recent powerful tremors, EFE reports.

The spokesperson of the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB), Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, said four of the deaths occurred in East Lombok, the area closest to the epicenter of Sunday's quake; one person died in West Lombok, and another five died on the neighboring island of Sumbawa.

All of the deaths were caused by collapsing houses, he said, adding that 151 buildings been damaged.

The earthquake also caused cracks on a highway in northern Lombok, landslides and power outages, Nugroho said.

The latest tremor, which struck on Sunday night, followed another quake of magnitude-6.3, which left two people dead, and 1,700 houses damaged, the BNPB said.

Sunday night's earthquake was the fourth which surpassed magnitude-6.0 in three weeks on Lombok, a popular tourist destination where thousands of people remain displaced and living in temporary shelters in evacuation camps.

A total of 417,000 people have forced to leave their homes, most of them after the magnitude-6.9 earthquake of Aug. 5, which killed 460 people and damaged some 72,000 buildings.

Lombok had already been hit by a magnitude-6.4 earthquake on Jul. 29, which killed 16 people, injured 355 and damaged some 1,500 buildings; that tremor was followed by over 300 aftershocks.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of high seismic and volcanic activity, and every year experiences about 7,000 earthquakes, most of which are moderate.

 

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