A shallow 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia's Sumatra island Tuesday, leaving one woman dead and 20 people injured, geologists and media reports said.

The quake hit at 10:07 am (0307 GMT) and was centred 51 kilometres south-west of Tebingtinggi in Bengkulu province, or about 64 kilometres north-west of Lahat in South Sumatra province, the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said via text message.

The quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres, it said.

The United States Geological Survey measured it at a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter scale.

A report by the online news site Kompas said an elderly woman died after being hit by debris from a falling house in Lahat while at least 20 people were injured.

The quake also heavily damaged more than 50 homes in several villages of the Lahat district, the report said, adding that the district administration had sent emergency assistance, including rice and other foodstuffs.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," the edge of a tectonic plate prone to seismic upheaval.

A major earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck in December 2004 off Sumatra's north-western coast, killing 230,000 people in 12 Indian Ocean countries, the majority of which - more than 170,000 - died in Indonesia's Aceh province.