MEUREUDU, Indonesia — A strong earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Aceh province early today, killing nearly 100 people and sparking a frantic rescue effort in the rubble of dozens of collapsed and damaged buildings.

Maj. Gen. Tatang Sulaiman, chief of the army in Aceh province, said at least 97 died while four people were pulled from the rubble alive. Another four or five are known to be buried, but he didn’t say if they were dead or alive. The Indonesian government declared a two-week emergency period in Aceh.

The rescue effort involving thousands of search officials, villagers, soldiers and police is concentrated on Meureudu, a severely affected town in Pidie Jaya district near the epicenter. Excavators were trying to remove debris from shop houses and other buildings where people were believed buried. TV footage showed rescuers in orange uniforms shining flashlights into the interiors of broken buildings as they searched for signs of life.

The province’s disaster mitigation agency said more than 600 people were injured. The national disaster agency said some 245 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed, mostly in Pidie Jaya, including 14 mosques.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck at 5:03 a.m. and was centered about 12 miles southeast of Sigli, a town near the northern tip of Aceh.

The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. A 2004 quake and tsunami killed a total of 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Aceh.