Earthquake shakes southern New Zealand, no injuries
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.9 rattled part of New Zealand's South Island on Wednesday, including the tourist town of Queenstown, the country's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences said.
The mid-afternoon quake was centered 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the farming and tourism town of Te Anau in the Fjordland region and was located 120 kilometers (75 miles) below the earth's surface, it reported.
Police and emergency services in the two towns had no immediate reports of injury or damage from the quake, centered in a sparsely populated region dominated by farms and national parks.
The same region was hit by a powerful 7.2 magnitude quake on Nov. 11 but that also caused no major damage or injury. A 7.1 magnitude quake shook the region in August 2003.
All the quakes have been centered along the so-called Alpine fault below South Island's southwest coast.
About 14,000 earthquakes are recorded in and around New Zealand each year by the institute. Most are small, but between 100 and 150 are big enough to be felt by residents.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists each year visit the Fjordland region's scenic wonders, including coastal fjords and sea life, snowcapped mountains, glacier-scraped valleys and World Heritage-listed rain forests.
Te Anau lies 1,025 kilometers (640 miles) southwest of the capital, Wellington.--AP
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