Japan issues tsunami advisory after 6.7-magnitude quake in northeast

Japanese authorities have issued a tsunami advisory following a 6.7-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Aomori prefecture in the country’s northeast, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

The quake struck at a depth of around 12 miles at 11:44 a.m. local time on December 12 (9:44 p.m. December 11 ET), Caliber.Az reports via US media.

Coastal areas of Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi prefectures could see waves of up to one metre (three feet), the agency warned.

At this stage, the extent of damage and injuries remains unclear. JMA stressed that an advisory is a lower level of caution than a warning.

The tremor follows a 7.5-magnitude earthquake earlier this week in northern Japan, which injured at least 34 people and caused minor damage and a tsunami in Pacific coastal communities.

In Kuji port in Iwate prefecture, water levels rose more than 60 centimetres above the tide, while hundreds of homes briefly lost power.

Authorities have urged residents in 182 municipalities along the northeast coast – from Chiba, east of Tokyo, to Hokkaido – to review emergency preparedness in the coming week, noting that this is a precaution rather than a prediction of a major earthquake.

The region remains sensitive to seismic activity. In 2011, a magnitude-9.0 quake triggered a devastating tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people and destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

By Aghakazim Guliyev