Fresh quake rocks Indonesia’s Lombok island

”The earthquake caused people to panic and flee their houses,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Metro TV.

Landslides were reported in a national park where hundr of hikers had been trapped on a volcano after a quake in late July. The park has been closed since that incident.

”I was driving to deliver aid to evacuees when suddenly the electricity pole was swaying. I realised it was an earthquake.

The tremor was also felt in the island’s capital Mataram and on the neighbouring resort island of Bali.

”People are traumatised by the previous earthquakes and aftershocks never seem to stop.

“

The latest tremor comes two weeks after a shallow 6.9-magnitude quake on August 5 levelled tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lombok.

But Lombok had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s “10 new Balis” with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destination, especially in the booming halal tourism sector.

In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (2nd L) visits injured earthquake survivors at a temporary hospital in North Lombok