6.2-magnitude quake hits off New Zealand coast: USGS

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of New Zealand on Tuesday (Feb 16), but no tsunami warning was immediately issued, US seismologists said.

The shallow earthquake hit at 8.28am (3.28 Singapore time), the US Geological Survey said, and was centred 219 kilometres northwest of the Auckland Islands, an archipelago due south of New Zealand's South Island.

"It was quite far south of the South Island so it's expected that there wouldn't be too many people who felt it," GeoNet Science seismologist John Ristau told the New Zealand Herald.

The quake struck less than a week before the fifth anniversary of a deadly 6.3-magnitude tremor in Christchurch, which killed 185 in one of New Zealand's deadliest disasters.

On Sunday Christchurch was rattled by a 5.8 quake, which sent goods flying off shelves, but no injuries nor structural damage to buildings were reported.

New Zealand is on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, which form part of the so-called "Ring of Fire", and experiences up to 15,000 tremors a year.