Quake shakes northern Australian city

CANBERRA:  Darwin in tropical northern Australia was shaken by a magnitude 5.3 offshore earthquake on Monday, Geoscience Australia said, but no damage was reported.   

Geoscience Australia duty seismologist Cvetan Sinadinovski said the earthquake occurred about 300 miles northwest of Darwin in the Banda Sea and that most people in the city would have felt the quake.   

“This event is an inter-plate earthquake which occurs when the Australian and Asian plates collide,” Sinadinovski said in a statement.   

The Banda Sea earthquake follows a magnitude 6.5 earthquake at Simeulue, in neighbouring Indonesia, on Saturday, but Sinadinovski said the two were not connected.   

On Dec. 26, 2004, a 9.15 magnitude quake off the Indonesian coast triggered a tsunami that killed as many as 232,000 people in the Indian Ocean region.

The region has since been hit by many aftershocks and tremors.