(Image source from: South China Morning Post)
The earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2, which is the strongest - has hit Indonesia's Lombok island, causing the collapse of structures, according to witnesses and the Southeast Asian nation’s meteorology and geophysics agency.
The quake was felt strongly on the island and in nearby Bali and followed a 6.9 quake on Sunday that left 347 people killed and damaging thousands of houses.
Tens of thousands of people on Lombok are homeless after a Sunday’s powerful earthquake.
Today's 6.2 magnitude quake was shallow, at a depth of 12 kilometers, centered in the northwest of the island, Indonesia's geological agency said.
It said it did not have the potential to cause a tsunami, because the epicenter of the quake was on land.
A Reuters witness in Lombok said the latest quake sent people into the streets in panic and caused buildings to collapse.
"Evacuees and people ran out of houses when they felt the strong shake of the 6.2 magnitude quake … People are still traumatized. Some buildings were damaged further because of this quake," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB), said on Twitter.
"The quake was felt strongly. There have been 355 aftershocks since Sunday," national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told AFP.
Evacuees at a shelter in northern Lombok's Tanjung district ran out onto the road crying and screaming, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
Motorcycles parked on the street toppled over and the walls of some nearby buildings collapsed.
The United States Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 5.9. In little over a week, it is the third big quake to hit Lombok. The buildings have been diminished which were still standing on the island after Sunday's 7.0 quake that killed at least 131 people and a 6.4 quake on July 29 that killed 16.
Most of the people who died in Sunday's tremor were in Kayangan, on the north side of the island, according to the state-run Antara news agency.
By Sowmya Sangam
