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2nd LD Writethru: Strong quake jolts Lefkada island in western Greece, one dead

Xinhua, November 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

A strong earthquake jolted the island of Lefkada in western Greece on Tuesday, and a 60-year-old woman was killed after a large rock damaged her home on the island, local media reported.

Damages in homes and regional roads have been reported, Christos Katforis, deputy mayor of Apollonion Municipality on the island, told the Greek national news agency AMNA.

The quake was felt across a large part of western Greece. Some people on Lefkada and nearby Ionian Sea island of Kefalonia rushed out into the streets.

Local fire department has sent crews to Lefkada to assess the situation.

Greek scientists at the Geodynamic Institute of the Athens Observatory located the tremor's epicenter at 5 km deep in the sea about 25 km off the island's northwestern coasts, and they revised the magnitude up to 6.1 from a preliminary estimate of 5.6 given by the Euro Mediterranean Seismic Center.

The U.S. Geological Survey said earlier that a magnitude-6.5 earthquake happened 14 km off Nidri, Greece, at 0710 GMT on Tuesday.

Earthquakes are common in Greece, but serious injuries and deaths are rare. More than 100 people died in a severe quake near Athens in 1999.

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