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Strong quake shakes New Zealand islands
A strong earthquake shook the sea floor northeast of New Zealand on Monday, but was not expected to generate a tsunami, officials said. The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.6 and was centred 425 kilometres southwest of the New Zealand territory of Raoul Island in the Kermadec Islands - an uninhabited Pacific island group 700 kilometres northeast of Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. It occurred 10 kilometres below the surface at 3:54 p.m. and was not felt in New Zealand. "That's a strong earthquake . . . but a little smaller than a tsunami-generating earthquake, or a tsunami that's going to be serious" in its impact, said seismologist Ken Gledhill of New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences. Based on historical earthquake information from the region, "it's unlikely to have caused a tsunami," Gledhill said. The Kermadec Islands regularly record strong quakes because they sit on the edge of the Pacific tectonic plate where it collides with the Australian plate to the west, he added. The active quake fault zone extends from Tonga, 2,000 kilometres northeast of New Zealand, down through the North and South Islands and into the ocean area south of New Zealand. |
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