Earthquakes in Indonesia kills one, injures four

A 7.3-magnitude earthquake that rattled buildings in northeastern Indonesia, causing panicked residents to flee homes, churches and shopping malls, left one dead and injured four, officials and witnesses said Monday.

Photo: Earthquakes in Indonesia kills one, injures four

The man who died suffered a heart attack, apparently triggered by the shock of Sunday's powerful quake, and one of those hurt broke his leg after jumping from the fourth floor of a building, said a doctor in Manado, a regional capital on Sulawesi island.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the earthquake's strength at magnitude 7.3 and the Indonesian seismological institute issued a tsunami alert via local television and radio, but the feared wave never came, the AP reports.

The temblor struck 10 kilometers (six miles) beneath the Molucca Sea and was centered 130 kilometers (80 miles) from the Maluku capital of Ternate and 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) northeast of Jakarta, the USGS said.

Some buildings in Manado suffered cracks and damage. Fears of a tsunami sent hundreds of people running inland to higher ground or racing off in cars and on motorcycles, causing massive traffic jams, witnesses said.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a massive earthquake struck off Indonesia's Sumatra island and triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people - 131,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone. A tsunami off Java island last year killed nearly 5,000.