Sumatra checks for damage from 6.3-magnitude earthquake

Indonesia's disaster agency is assessing the impact of a strong earthquake that hit off the southern coast of Sumatra island late on Tuesday (Aug 23), it said in a statement, noting there had been no reports of damage or casualties by near midnight.

The 6.3 magnitude quake struck at 9.30pm local time (10.31pm Singapore time), the country's meteorology and geophysics agency (BMKG) said, with its epicentre 80km south of the town of Manna in Bengkulu province, at a depth of 52km.

Manna is about 600 km northwest of the capital Jakarta.

The tremor was felt for two to six seconds by residents along the southern coastline of Sumatra, prompting some to run out of their homes, disaster agency BNPB said in a statement.

"It was quite strong," a Bengkulu agency official, Septi, said.

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Indonesia straddles the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire", a seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth's crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.

In February, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake killed more than 10 people when it struck inland near the western coast of Sumatra.