Sunday, October 25, 2009 JAKARTA: Indonesia briefly issued a tsunami warning on Saturday after a powerful earthquake struck the eastern part of the country, but the meteorology agency later lifted the alert.Officials were still checking for possible casualties or damage after the quake struck in an area of the Banda sea southeast of the Maluku islands.The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck at 11:40 p.m. (1440 GMT) and measured magnitude 7.0.Its epicentre was located 232 km (144 miles) northwest of Saumlaki and 366 km southeast of Ambon at a depth of 138.5 km.The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, also said that the earthquake did not have the potential to trigger a tsunami in the Indian Ocean due to its depth.In Papua, further east, Metro TV reported people panicked and fled to the hills after the quake, while in Ambon, in Maluku, people fled their homes fearing further aftershocks. "We felt the quake in the hotel. But people who live in a one-storey house probably didn't feel it ...," a witness in Ambon was quoted by Metro TV as saying .Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes lying on the "Pacific Ring of Fire", an area of intense seismic activity where several tectonic plates meet.A powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 killed more than 1,000 people in an area around Padang in Western Sumatra last month.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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