A 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck western Rwanda Friday with a depth of 100 km, leaving four people injured and six homes destroyed, according to an official statement.

People look at the damage after an earthquake in 2008, in Cyangugu, 250km south of the Rwandan capital Kigali. Picture: Lionel Healing

The hardest-hit area was in the mountains and populated zones located in 8 districts in the Western Rwanda on the shore of lake Kivu close to Rwanda’s borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo,the Rwandan ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs said.

Congolese authorities have dispatched a team of scientists to the nearby Nyiragongo volcano to check for new fissures that may have resulted from the quake.

Thousands of people across several districts from North and Western Rwanda had been forced from their homes.

The Goma Volcano Observatory (GVO) based in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) measured the earthquake as magnitude 5.8.

“We are working together with Rwanda Red Cross to investigate additional casualties,” the spokesperson of Rwandan ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs, Frederic Ntawukuliryayo, told Xinhua in an exclusive telephone interview. “The aftershocks seem non-stopping,” he said.

The epicentre was in Lake Tanganyika, around 100 km from the affected districts in the Western Rwanda, it said.

The quake was also felt in several parts located at feet chain of volcanoes in Northern province, it said.

In the meanwhile, local media reported in Kigali that several shook for several minutes, while some towns in the Western province had also lost power supply and telecommunications.

This disaster occured after another earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale struck in February 2008 several parts of South western Rwanda and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (RC).

According to an official toll, at least 45 people were then killed and hundreds seriously injured in the two countries.