A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday, destroying some houses, killing one person and injuring at least 10, authorities said. "The evacuation is still being carried out," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the national disaster mitigation agency BNPB, said by text message. "Aftershock remains frequent ... Some houses collapsed." The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.1 and at a relatively shallow depth of 18 km. A series of earthquakes in July and August killed nearly 500 people on the holiday island of Lombok, hundreds of kilometres southwest of Sulawesi. Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes. In 2004, a big earthquake off the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean, killing 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
