38 injured as 6.7-magnitude quake hits Indonesia

At least 38 people have been wounded and scores of houses, school buildings and a health clinic have collapsed after a quake of 6.7-magnitude on the Richter scale rocked the eastern parts of Indonesia Monday morning, officials said.

In Bima town of the Indonesian province of West Nusa Tenggara, the hardest-hit and the closest area to the epicentre of the quake, one health clinic, four school buildings and ten houses have collapsed, and over 50 houses got damaged, a Xinhua report quoted Disaster Management Agency Priyadi Kardono as saying.

"Thirty-eight people have been injured and they are being treated at Bima General Hospital," an official from the Health Ministry Rustam Pakaya said, adding that he can not confirm any fatality yet.

The quake occurred at 02.41 Jakarta time (1941 GMT Sunday) with its epicentre located at 28 km southwest Raba of West Nusa Tenggara province and at 25 km depth, an official said.

The disaster management agency issues tsunami warning only when the magnitude of earthquake is at least 7 on the Richter scale.

The quake triggered panic among the residents of Bima, said Kusnadi, an official in-charge at the Bima Military Command.

"People here were panicked, they rushed out from their homes. So far we get (the) report that only the fence of a building (has) collapsed," he told Xinhua over phone from Bima.

The quake comes as Indonesia is undertaking reconstruction works in the Indonesian provinces of West Sumatra and West Java after they were hit by 7.6 and 7.3-magnitudes of quakes respectively in the recent past. More than one thousand people were killed in these quakes.

Last updated on Nov 9^th, 2009 at 07:36 am IST--IANS