JAKARTA, February 20 (RIA Novosti) - A strong 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit Indonesia's western island of Sumatra on Wednesday, a spokesman for the country's meteorological agency said.
He said the undersea tremor located 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the town of Sinabang in the Aceh province was powerful enough to issue a tsunami warning. No casualties have been reported so far.
Indonesia is often hit by earthquakes and volcano eruptions triggering deadly tsunamis since it rests in the area of the so called Ring of Fire, where movement and collision of crustal plates result in about 90% of world's earthquakes.
In December 2004, a magnitude-9 earthquake with an epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra lead to a tsunami killing over 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.
