March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Eastern Indonesia and Australia were rattled Tuesday evening by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake centered in the Banda Sea, which surrounds islands in eastern Indonesia, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

There were no immediate reports of damage from the quake, which struck at 7:42 p.m. local time and was centered about 660 kilometers (410 miles) north of Darwin, northern Australia, at a depth of 191 kilometers.

The Golden, Colorado-based earthquake center said there would be no tsunami, or giant ocean waves, such as those that occurred after a Dec. 26 quake off western Indonesia, which had a depth of 30 kilometers and killed more than 200,000 people in the southern Asia.

``The depth of it was pretty deep, so no tsunami,'' Waverly Person, a survey geophysicist said. ``It was felt in Darwin and some of the (Indonesian) islands, but because of the depth, there was no tsunami expected.''

Indonesia's 18,000 islands are prone to earthquakes because the nation sits along the Pacific's ``ring of fire,'' a zone of active volcanoes and faults in tectonic plates.

To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Zeranski in New York at tzeranski@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 2, 2005 10:17 EST