Magnitude 6.9 earthquake hits Japan

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck southwest Japan on Monday, the country’s Meteorological Agency has said.

The earthquake hit at 9.19 pm local time (3:19 pm CET), it added.

Tsunami warnings were issued for Miyazaki Prefecture on the southwest island of Kyushu, the epicentre of the earthquake, as well as for the nearby Kochi Prefecture on Shikoku island.

Residents in some coastal areas were told to evacuate their homes as a precaution, while some trains stopped working.

There were no immediate reports of damage.

Public broadcaster NHK TV said that a tsunami with a height of approximately one metre reached land within 30 minutes of the tremor.

A wide area in Kyushu shook in the earthquake, which struck at a depth of 30 kilometres, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.

The country frequently suffers earthquakes because of its location along the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of fault lines and volcanoes in the Pacific Basin.

Experts met on Monday evening to discuss the latest earthquake, which could be related to the so-called Nankai Trough.

The term refers to a wide area that is thought to be occasionally hit by major earthquakes, such as the one that killed more than 1,300 people in Japan in 1946.

One of the largest ever earthquakes occurred in 2011 off the east coast of Japan. More than 18,000 people were killed as a result of the 9.0-magnitude quake and the tsunami it unleashed in its wake.