At least 30 people were killed and 156 injured after a magnitude-6.5 quake struck off Indonesia's eastern Maluku province on Thursday, a senior disaster official said on Sunday.

The jolts damaged houses, office buildings, as well as health and educational facilities, according to the spokesman of the national disaster management agency Agus Wibowo.

An emergency designation was announced in the provincial capital Ambon on Thursday.

Fears of a tsunami and further damage to buildings amid frequent aftershocks have forced 25,000 residents to flee their homes and take shelter, local disaster management agency official Farida Salampessy told Xinhua by phone.

"There are some villages where all people leave the areas for fears of the tsunami from happening after the quake. The villages are empty now," she said.

Most of the victims were hit by falling concrete blocks and parts of the buildings damaged by landslides, which were triggered by the jolts, Eva Tuhumuri, secretary of the national disaster management agency, told Xinhua.

The quake rocked the region at 06 : 46 a.m. Jakarta time on Thursday, with the epicenter at 40 kilometers northeast of Ambon and a depth of 10 kilometers, according to Ali Imron, head of the local meteorology and geophysics agency.