At least 14 more die in fresh Indonesian quakes

HONG KONG — The Indonesian island of Lombok was reeling Monday from two earthquakes that killed at least 14 people a day earlier, just two weeks after a separate earthquake devastated the island and killed at least 460 people.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency, said 12 people died on Lombok and neighboring Sumbawa Island when a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck Lombok on Sunday night. He said two other people also died Sunday afternoon when a separate, 6.5 magnitude quake hit Lombok.

The new earthquakes came as the region was still recovering from the earthquake that struck Lombok and the three nearby Gili Islands on Aug. 5, wiping out entire villages and killing hundreds. The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude of that quake at 6.9.

“This, of course, has increased the pain and deep sadness among the people of Lombok, who continue to be rocked,” Sutopo said of the new quakes in his statement.

Casualties aside, the Aug. 5 quake that struck off Lombok’s north coast injured 7,733 people, displaced more than 417,000 others and damaged more than 71,000 buildings, the disaster management agency reported last week.

Sutopo said that more than 1,800 homes had been damaged in the two quakes Sunday.

After the Sunday night quake, “everybody ran in panic,” Imam Satriawan, a driver who works in Mataram, a city on the western side of Lombok Island, said in a text message. “We are still living in our car and the car shook.”