Strong 6.6 quake rocks Siberia: USGS

A strong earthquake on Tuesday hit Russia's Siberian region of Tyva on the border with Mongolia but caused no casualties or damage, Russian officials said.

A 6.6-magnitude quake shook southwestern Siberia some 58 miles (94 kilometres) east of Tyva's main city of Kyzyl, US seismologists earlier said.

The shallow quake, which struck at 10:21 pm (1521 GMT), hit at a depth of 3.7 miles (six kilometres), the US Geological Survey said in a statement.

The Russian emergencies ministry confirmed that a strong earthquake hit Tyva.

"According to preliminary information, there are no casualties or destruction," a spokesman for the Siberian branch of the emergencies ministry, told AFP. He declined further details.

The ITAR-TASS news agencies said residents of the larger Siberian cities of Krasnoyarsk and Abakan, hundreds of kilometres from Kyzyl, had reported feeling tremors but there were no reports of damage there.

The epicentre of the quake was in a sparsely populated region near the border with Mongolia.

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