Istanbul – And 5.3 magnitude earthquake caused panic on Saturday in Nigde province, a south central region of Turkey few hundred kilometers to the west of the region devastated at the beginning of the month by several serious earthquakes.
The earthquake occurred at 10:27 GMT (6:27 am Puerto Rico time) and could be felt in several neighboring provinces, reported the Turkish press, although there is still no information on possible damage.
Earthquakes between magnitudes 5 and 6 are relatively frequent in Turkeywhich registers a dozen of this type of tremors per year, and normally do not cause major damage to homes or infrastructure.
The Turkish Kandilli seismographic observatory locates the epicenter of the tremor in Bor, a municipality about ten kilometers southwest of the provincial capital of Nigde, a city of 230,000 inhabitants in southern Cappadocia.
The region is located about 200 kilometers west of the areas devastated by the earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 on the 6th, which have caused more than 44,000 deaths and almost two million homeless people.
Those extraordinarily strong tremors may have caused a readjustment of several tectonic plates which are now manifesting themselves in moderate earthquakes in neighboring areas, but do not predict a new disaster of greater magnitude, geophysicist Okan Tüysüz explained to NTV.
