Indonesia earthquake: Huge 6.1 magnitude quake rocks Ring of Fire near Papua New Guinea

The huge quake hit about 101 miles (168km) south-southwest of the town of Jayapura, the US scientific agency monitoring and natural disasters said. The massive tremor, which struck at 9.42am, affected also the country neighbouring with Indonesia, Papua Nuova Guinea. And it sparked fear the area could be also hit by a tsunami.  

Local authorities haven’t yet confirmed whether a tsunami alert is in place and the extension of the damages made by the earthquake. 

Jayapura is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of Papua, with a population of 256,705, according to the 2010 Census. 

Two more earthquakes struck in Indonesia during the past 24 hours, USGS maps show.  

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A 4.5 magnitude earthquake hit 21.7 miles (35km) north of Komodo at 4.12pm on Saturday. 

And a 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck 127.381 miles (205km) north-northeast of Nabire at 2.13pm on the same day. 

Indonesia is still recovering from a devastating 7.5magnitude earthquake and the following tsunami that hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in September, killing almost 850 people. 

The country , according to Professor Bill McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at University College London.  

Speaking to Express.co.uk earlier this year, he said: “The Ring of Fire is a girdle of volcanoes and earthquake zones that circles the Pacific Ocean, and which marks the join between some of the planet’s most active tectonic plates. 

“Almost all the of the world’s most explosive and dangerous volcanoes are located here, along with the some of the longest and most deadly earthquake faults 

“Many of the biggest faults in the Ring of Fire are submarine so that their rupture can trigger catastrophic tsunamis, such as those that struck Indonesia and the Indian Ocean in 2004 and Japan in 2011.” 

Approximately 12,790 earthquakes struck in 2018, most of them in the areas sitting on the Ring of Fire

The Ring stretches a total of 25,000 miles from New Zealand to the tip of South America in a horseshoe shape.