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Strong Quake Rocks Indonesia's Maluku,

Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media

JAKARTA - A strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku on Wednesday, prompting the issuing of a tsunami alert, the meteorology and geophysics office said here.

The earthquake, which struck at 4:32 pm (0732 GMT) was centered 300 kilometres (185 miles) northeast of the East Timorese capital Dili, some 23 kilometres under the floor of the Banda Sea, the office said in a statement.

"There is a tsunami potential," the statement said.

"The quake has tsunami potential because it was shallow, at 23 kilometres. The area that should be on alert is around Timor," Suharjono, from the geophysics headquarters here, told ElShinta radio.

The US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake at 6.2, at a depth of only 10 kilometres under the sea floor. Witnesses in Dili told AFP by phone that the quake was not strongly felt there.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates meet, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity. The archipelago nation was hardest hit by the earthquake-triggered Asian tsunami in December 2004. Some 168,000 people alone were killed in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra.

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