6.1-magnitude earthquake strikes off Italy
Rome: A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Italy’s southern Calabria region early Tuesday, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reported.
The quake occurred at 00:12 a.m. local time Tuesday (2212 GMT on Monday), with its epicenter located at a depth of about 250 kilometers, the institute said.
The epicenter was located in the sea off the coast of the southern Calabria region.
Tremors were felt in several southern Italian regions, including Calabria, Sicily, Campania and Puglia, Xinhua news agency reported quoting local media.
No casualties or major damage have been reported so far. Local authorities are monitoring the situation.
Earlier in March, a strong, incredibly deep 375-to-381 km depth earthquake struck directly off the coast of Naples. This was noted by geophysicists as the strongest deep-earth fracture in that specific sector in a decade, sending pressure waves upward through the area’s volcanic plumbing systems.
Earlier this year, in January, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake in the Ionian Sea, just off the southern tip of Italy, shook large parts of Malta.
The tremor was first recorded at 5.53am by Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome. Just one second later, it was also detected by seismic instruments operated by the University of Malta’s Seismic Monitoring and Research Group, which measured it as a magnitude 5 event.
According to the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, the earthquake struck at a depth of 58 kilometres and was located about 62 kilometres off the coast of Reggio Calabria in southern Italy.
Data from Italian monitoring centres indicates that this was the strongest in a recent sequence of tremors recorded in the seas off Sicily over the past week.
Italy is Europe’s most earthquake-prone country because it sits directly on the highly complex collision boundary between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates.