A strong undersea earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale rocked Indonesia and northern Australia Wednesday but there were no reports of casualties or damage, according to the Geography and Meteorology Bureau of Indonesia.

The epicenter was found at 7.32 degrees south latitude and 130.02 degrees east longitude. People in Ambon region and East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, and in Darwin, Australia, could feel the tremor, said the bureau.

Meteorologists said the quake, centered in the Banda Sea, was unlikely to cause a tsunami like the one which devastated westernmost Aceh province in December.

There have been no reports of casualty yet. The residents within the region have been evacuated, local officials said.

Wednesday's earthquake would not trigger tsunami, local media quoted an Australian seismologist as saying.

Crustal movements are frequent under the Banda Sea. Earthquakes measuring above 5 on the Richter scale can be detected once in every two months in this region.

The quake, 190 kilometers (117 miles) beneath the sea, occurred at 5:48 PM (10:48 GMT).

The strong tremor was centered nearly 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) from the epicenter of the Dec. 26 quake that triggered killer waves in 11 nations, but it rattled nerves in a region that has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks. Wednesday's quake was not an aftershock.

The Indonesian meteorology agency said the tremor was felt in the coastal towns of Jayapura, Sorong, Merauke and Manokwari on easternmost Papua province, as well as in Ambon city in Maluku province.

Residents in the coastal town of Waingapu in East Nusa Tenggara province also experienced earth movements.

Two consecutive earthquakes measuring 3.7 and 5.0 on the Richter scale shook the resort island of Bali earlier Wednesday.

About 200,000 people are believed to have died in Indonesia's westernmost Aceh province when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake triggered a tsunami that devastated the coastline in last December.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2005)