An earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale rocked Maluku Province in eastern Indonesia on Tuesday morning with no reports of casualty, according to the Meteorology and Geophysics Department.

The quake jolted the province at 05:53 local time (2053 GMT), Subagio AS, an official at the department, told Xinhua by phone.

The epicenter of the quake was 33 kilometers down below the sea level and located at 4.89 south latitude and 127.05 east longitude, he said.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is located on so- called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. This makes the country prone to seismic upheavals.

A powerful earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, off the coast of Sumatra Island triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in Indonesia and other Asian countries.

Source: Xinhua