Quake rocks Indonesia, Australia

A powerful earthquake rocked the northern Australian city of Darwin and eastern Indonesia yesterday but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, seismologists said.

Rahmat Triyono, the officer in charge at Jakarta's Meteorological and Geophysical Agency, said the quake's epicentre was 320 kilometres under the sea, too deep to cause a tsunami.

"If we look at its depth, there is no possibility of a tsunami," Mr Triyono told Reuters in Jakarta.

The quake, estimated to have a magnitude between 6.8 and 7.1, was centred in the Banda Sea in Indonesia's east, about 800 kilometres north of Darwin, and struck at 1050 GMT.

"It lasted about a minute," a spokesman for state-run Geoscience Australia said.

Geoscience Australia seismologist Mark Leonard also said the earthquake was unlikely to cause a tsunami.

"The Banda Sea is one of the most seismically active areas in the world and gets an earthquake of about magnitude five every couple of months," he told the AAP news agency.

Mr Triyono said there had been no immediate reports of any damage or casualties.

The quake was felt as far away as 300 kilometres south of Darwin in the northern Australian town of Katherine. It was also felt around the Moluccas island chain in Indonesia's east and the remote province of Papua, which borders Papua New Guinea.