HONG KONG, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- A rare earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale jolted densely-populated Hong Kong Thursday night, no casualty has been reported by press time.

The tremor was felt at about 19:53 local time (1153 GMT) Thursday as a number of calls from residents poured into the Hong Kong Observatory to report having felt a tremor.

The shaking lasted for a few seconds inside the skyscrapers in Hong Kong, a metropolis populated by about 7 million people.

The Hong Kong Observatory said in a news bulletin released at about 20:47 local time (1247 GMT) that its seismograph also recorded the shaking but it had to analyze the data.

The epicenter was initially determined at 22.0 degrees north latitude and 114.3 degrees longitude in the sea area around Dangan Island, or 36 km south-southwest of Hong Kong, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.

Earthquake had rarely been felt in Hong Kong and only 51 tremors had been felt in Hong Kong since 1979 when the Hong Kong Observatory began recording earthquake, local TV broadcast said. Enditem