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Earthquakes rock Alboran Sea, no report of damage

Xinhua, March 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

The area of the western Mediterranean known as the Alboran Sea was shaken by two earthquakes on Tuesday morning, the Spanish Geographic Institute said. There was no report of damage so far.

The two tremors happened almost simultaneously in the early hours of Tuesday.

The first one took place at 5:40 a.m. local time (0440 GMT) between the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the north coast of Morocco and the Moroccan town of Alhucemas. It registered 5.1 on the Richter Scale and was followed by a series of aftershocks, ranging between 3.0 and 3.9 on the Richter Scale.

The effects were felt on the northern coast of Morocco and in the south of Spain where emergency services received calls in the provinces of Malaga and Cordoba.

The second quake measured 5.6 on the Richter Scale by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS located the epicenter of the quake at 64 km northeast of Alhucemas and at the depth of 10 km.

These quakes were the latest in the series of seismic activities in the area since a quake of 6.3 on the Richter Scale left 26 injured and caused the damage of 12 million euros (13.3 million U.S. dollars) to property in Melilla on January 25.

The area, which sits on the border of the African and Eurasian plates, has been especially active in recent days, with a series of quakes measuring over 4.0 on the Richter Scale detected on last Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Endit