JAKARTA, Feb 26, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A shallow 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit near the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, forcing residents to flee outside but with no damage or casualties reported.

The tremor hit at 6:55 am local time (2255 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) with the epicentre offshore near North Sulawesi province, according to the USGS.

The country's meteorological agency gave a lower magnitude of 6.0 and said there was no potential for a tsunami.

Locals in North Sulawesi described the panic when the quake struck.

"I had just woken up when I realised it was an earthquake. It was strong, swaying from side to side," Gita Waloni, a 25-year-old guest at a hotel in North Minahasa district in the province told AFP.

"Objects inside my rooms rattled. I decided to get out. I was so scared there would be an aftershock while I was inside the lift. All other guests had also fled."

The vast archipelago nation experiences frequent earthquakes due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

A magnitude-6.2 quake that shook Sulawesi in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless.

In 2018, a magnitude-7.5 quake and subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi killed more than 2,200 people.

And in 2004, a magnitude-9.1 quake struck Aceh province, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia.