JAKARTA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has experienced a total of 11,577 earthquakes at various magnitudes throughout 2018, significantly higher than 6,929 ones recorded last year, a senior official at Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said here on Saturday.
"It means there is a drastic increase of up to 4,648 more earthquakes in 2018 if compared to 2017," Head of the earthquake and tsunami section at BMKG Rahmat Triyono said.
He said that strong earthquakes with magnitudes of 6.1 to 7.0 occurred 12 times, while one powerful earthquake of 7.5 magnitude occurred on Sept. 28, devastating part of Central Sulawesi province's capital Palu and triggering a tsunami.
The multiple disasters in the province claimed over 2,000 lives, injured over 10,000, displaced over 70,000 and left more than 1,000 missing.
No "super earthquake" of magnitude 8.1 to 9.0 has occurred in Indonesia in 2018, Rahmat said.
Altogether 2,273 earthquakes were dominated by mild temblors at a range of 4.1 to 5.0 magnitude, he said.
In terms of depth, most of the earthquakes, or 9,585 of them, were at the depth of less than 60 km.
"Earthquakes with medium depths between 61 to 300 km occurred 1,856 times, while the ones at depths of more than 399 km occurred 136 times," he added.
