Tokyo: A moderate 5.9-magnitude earthquake
struck off the south coast of the main Japanese island of
Honshu, US geologists said on Tuesday, but no tsunami warning was
issued.
The tremor, which hit just before midnight, hit at a
depth of around 22 kilometres (14 miles), around 34 kilometres
south of Shizuoka and 162 kilometres south of Tokyo, the US
Geological Survey said.
The epicentre of the quake was a considerable distance
from the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan on March
11, generating a massive tsunami that wiped out whole
stretches of the country's northeast coast, leaving more than
20,000 people dead or missing.
Thousands more were made homeless when a nuclear
reactor began melting down after its cooling systems were
swamped by the waves in the worst atomic disaster the world
has seen for a quarter of a century.
Japan, located at the junction of four tectonic
plates, experiences 20 per cent of the strongest quakes
recorded on Earth each year.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, August 02, 2011, 10:31