6.1-magnitude earthquake strikes off Russia's Kamchatka

Vladivostok: An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale was recorded off the coast of Kamchatka in Russia's Far East region on Friday, with no reports so far of damage, casualties, or a tsunami threat, local authorities said.

According to preliminary data released by the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the earthquake occurred at 4:24 p.m. (local time) in the Pacific Ocean, Xinhua news agency reported.

The tremors, with an intensity of up to five points, were felt in places including Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Yelizovo, Vilyuchinsk, and several settlements in the Yelizovo district.

The epicentre of the quake was located 126 km from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, at a depth of 27 km beneath the seabed.

Earlier this month, Russia's Shiveluch volcano in the Kamchatka region erupted after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the eastern coast of the country.

The volcano has started to "spew ash and lava", the state-owned TASS news agency reported on August 18, citing the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano has begun... According to visual evaluations, the ash column is rising as high as 8 kilometres above the sea level," the report quoted scientists as saying.

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake jolted a sea area off the east coast of Kamchatka on Saturday evening.

The US National Tsunami Warning Center had initially issued a tsunami threat, but later said the threat had passed. The Russian Emergencies Ministry had not issued any tsunami warning.

The earthquake was followed by a series of aftershocks in the Pacific Ocean off Kamchatka, measuring between 3.9 and 5.0. Most of them were not felt on the land, TASS reported, citing the ministry.

Earlier in July, an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck near the east coast of Kamchatka region, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said.