A 5.6-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia left at least 46 dead

CNN
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At least 46 people have died after it reached a magnitude of 5.6 Earthquake He hits IndonesiaWest Java province on Monday, according to the country’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB).

Another 700 were injured, according to Major General Suharyanto, head of the BNPB.

The quake hit Cianjur district in West Java province at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), according to the USGS.

Four schools and 52 homes collapsed or were severely damaged, according to the local office of BNPB in Cianjur district. The office said a mosque and a hospital were also damaged.

Reuters reported that the bank said there was no danger of a tsunami.

Hermann Sehrmann, a government official in Cianjur, told the media that some residents were trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings. Metro TV news channel showed what appeared to be hundreds of victims being treated in the hospital’s parking garage.

It said an Islamic boarding school was also damaged, while communications were disrupted due to power outages.

Television footage showed residents huddled outside buildings that were almost completely reduced to rubble, according to Reuters.

One of them, whose name was only Mochlis, said he felt a “strong tremor” and the walls and ceiling of his office were damaged.

“I was very shocked. Mochliss told Metro TV.

BMKG warned of the danger of landslides, especially in the event of heavy rains, as 25 aftershocks were recorded in the two hours following the earthquake.

Indonesia sits on the “Ring of Fire,” a band around the Pacific Ocean that experiences frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity. One of the most seismically active regions on the planet, it stretches from Japan and Indonesia on one side of the Pacific Ocean all the way to California and South America on the other side.

In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the island of Sumatra in northern Indonesia triggered a tsunami that struck 14 countries, killing 226,000 people along the Indian Ocean coast, more than half of them in Indonesia.