Lake Tiberias hit with new wave of earthquakes

AMMAN — Five earthquakes struck Lake Tiberias on Friday, with the strongest measuring 3.7 on the Richter Scale, according to the Jordan Seismological Observatory (JSO).

JSO Director Mahmoud Qaryouti told the Jordan News Agency, Petra, that the tremors happened between 11:51am and 1:12pm, with depths ranging between two and five kilometres.

Since July 4, JSO has registered several earthquakes in the Lake Tiberias area, with the strongest measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale on July 5, which was felt by residents of Amman (mainly in Sahab) and Zarqa (Russeifa). 

Qaryouti told the Jordan times last week that “the situation is generally reassuring as long as the magnitude is less than four on the Richter scale”.

In late November 2016, the JSO recorded an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale, which struck an area 100 kilometres away from the southern city of Aqaba.

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, followed by four aftershocks, struck Aqaba on May 16, 2016, and no causalities or damages were reported.

Over the past 100 years, Jordan witnessed two strong earthquakes: the first was in 1927 in Jericho, Palestine, which measured 6.3 on the Richter Scale, and the second was in 1995 in Aqaba, measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale, the JSO director said in previous remarks. 

Jordan is located along the Syrian-African fault line which runs along the western border, part of the Great Rift Valley, approximately 6,000 kilometres in length, which runs from Lebanon's Beqaa Valley in Asia to Mozambique in southeastern Africa.