4.5 earthquake registered in Aqaba at dawn

AMMAN — An earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale was registered in the port city of Aqaba, 330km south of the capital, at around 5:15am on Wednesday, but no damages or casualties were recorded, the Jordan Seismological Observatory said.

The Jordan News Agency, Petra, quoted Ali Sawarieh, geology director at the Energy Ministry, as saying that the quake was centred at a depth of 10 kilometres in the southeastern part of Aqaba and no injuries were reported.

On June 27, an earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale was registered in the port city, centred at a depth of 10 kilometres 57 kilometres south of Aqaba. 

Jordan lies along the seismically active Dead Sea Transform Fault, with estimates predicting a major earthquake every 100 years.

Seismic activity is normal in the Jordan Rift Valley area, which extends from northern Jordan down to the Dead Sea and is part of the Great Rift Valley that stretches from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey down to the Zambezi Valley in southern Africa. 

In January, 1995, an earthquake registering 7.3 on the Richter scale was felt in Aqaba. 

Also on Wednesday, Jordan Geologists Association President Sakher Ensour said a report published in an Israeli newspaper lacks scientific and logical bases. 

Yedioth Ahronoth featured an item about a destructive earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale that is going to destroy 70 per cent of the region.

The latest quakes, he said, are the natural result of tectonic plate movement, dismissing claims that they may have been the result of nuclear explosions or other manmade circumstances, Petra reported.