Powerful quake rattles Indonesia*

    * Story Highlights
    * Deep earthquake shakes eastern Indonesia Saturday
    * Local meteorologists say quake has preliminary magnitude of 7.1
    * No immediate reports of casualties or damage

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A strong earthquake shook eastern Indonesia
on Saturday, sending panicked residents running out of their homes.

The tremor struck with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 at a depth of
about 60 miles in Maluku province, about 1,700 miles east of the
capital, Jakarta, according to the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics
Agency. The U.S. Geological Survey put the quake at a magnitude 6.3.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries and no tsunami
alert was issued, said Suharjono, an agency spokesman who like many
Indonesians goes by a single name.

"The TV, chairs, everything in my house fell down, I saw utility poles
shaking," Gulman, a resident of Saumlaki town on the island of Tanimbar,
told El-shinta radio.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago with 17,500 islands, is prone
to seismic upheavals because of its location on the so-called Pacific
"Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the
Pacific Basin.