According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake, initially recorded at magnitude 7.8, occurred at 6:48 am (10:48 pm on Wednesday in Lisbon) in the Moluccas Sea.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC), based in Hawaii (USA), issued an alert for the possibility of “dangerous tsunami waves” within a radius of 1,000 kilometers from the epicenter.
The alert covers Indonesia and also Malaysia and the Philippines.
For Indonesia, the alert is for waves between 0.3 meters and one meter, according to PTWC.
An AFP correspondent living in Manado, in the province of North Celebes, said that residents of the city, about 300 kilometers from the Moluccas, woke up to the earthquake and took to the streets.
The tremors continued for “quite a long time”, but no significant damage was recorded, the correspondent added.
Waves of 0.3 meters were recorded in the two hours following the earthquake in North Maluku province, north of Ternate, and 0.2 meters in Bitung on Celebes island, about 270 kilometers west of Ternate, the Indonesian geological agency, BMKG, said in a statement.
Budi Nurgianto, 42, resident of Ternate, told AFP that he was indoors when the earthquake hit the region, causing panic among those abroad.
The International Oceanographic Commission (IOC) warned of tsunami waves “reaching 0.3 to 1 meter above tide level” on some Indonesian coasts.
Waves of less than 0.3 meters can also hit Guam, Japan, Malaysia, Palau, the Philippines and Taiwan.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago with more than 280 million people, sits on major earthquake faults and is frequently hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
In 2022, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake killed at least 602 people in the city of Cianjur in West Java, the deadliest in Indonesia since the 2018 Celebes earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 4,300 people.
In 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries. The majority of victims were recorded in Aceh province, Indonesia.
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