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Posted at 8:41 a.m., Wednesday, September 26, 2007

6.4 earthquake hits off Indonesia's Sumatra island

Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A powerful undersea earthquake rattled western Indonesia on Wednesday, officials said, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The 6.4-magnitude quake was centered 80 miles southwest of Padang, a town on Sumatra island still recovering from a series of strong tremors that killed nearly two dozen people earlier this month, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

It struck nearly 21 miles beneath the ocean floor at 10:43 p.m., the USGS said.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, killed more than 131,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province and left a half-million homeless.