Indonesia issued a tsunami warning, lifted later, after a 7.0 earthquake hit off the Maluku Islands at about 2:40 p.m. Thursday.

©USGS


There have been no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the quake's epicenter in the Molucca Sea about 223 kilometers north of the North Maluku provincial capital Ternate, about 950 km west southwest of Davao on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and 44.6 km under the seabed.

The quake was also felt in the North Sulawesi provincial capital Manado, about 240 km east of Ternate.

"I am outside my office now, because everything -- glasses, helmets -- were shaking," a man in Manado told the Jakarta-based private radio station Elshinta.

An hour after the quake, no tsunami was reported and the Jakarta-based Meteorological and Geophysics Agency lifted the tsunami warning.

Indonesia, with more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes.

In December 2004, a powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed about 200,000 people in Aceh Province and tens of thousands of others in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and other areas around the perimeter of the Indian Ocean.

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake jolted Nias Island, off Sumatra to the south of Aceh, in March 2005 killing more than 800 people.

And a strong earthquake also rocked Yogyakarta and surrounding Central Java cities on May 27 last year, killing about 5,800 people.