25 injured, hundreds of buildings damaged in strong quake in Indonesia

A powerful earthquake striking central Indonesia earlier this week has left 25 people wounded and hundreds of buildings damaged, a senior official of the country's disaster agency said here on Thursday.

The local authority in Poso district of central Sulawesi province, the hardest hit area, has declared a seven-day emergency status for the quake-affected area since Tuesday, a spokesman of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency told Xinhua in a text message.

A total of 332 buildings, comprising 311 houses, 13 school buildings, six office buildings, two mosques and six churches suffered damages, Sutopo Purwo Nagroho said.

As many as 328 people fled their homes and took shelters at makeshift tents as aftershocks kept occurring after the main shock of 6.6 magnitude hit the province on Monday evening, said Sutopo.

According to the meteorology and geophysics agency, about 200 aftershocks have followed the main quake so far.

The epicenter of the quake was located at 38 km northwest of Poso district with a depth of 43 km under earth, the agency said.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)