A new earthquake struck central Greece near the city of Larissa on Thursday, in the same region where a stronger quake injured 11 people the previous day, the seismological observatory in Athens said.
The quake, which according to the U.S. Geological Survey was 5.6 magnitude, caused rock falls near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Meteora Orthodox Monasteries in Kalabaka, emergency services said.
No injuries were reported immediately due to the new earthquake, which was felt 20 kilometers from Elassona near Larissa, the observatory said.
But rescue services said there were landslides and new damage to buildings that had already been weakened by the earthquake the previous day.
And the state television channel ERT showed footage of panicked residents on the street.
The Athens Observatory described the quake as “very strong” and said it occurred at 20:38 (1838 GMT) about 16 kilometers from Elassona and 244 kilometers north of Athens.
The head of Greece’s earthquake protection authority, Efthymis Lekkas, told Skai radio that the new quake was about five kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake on Wednesday.
“This new earthquake triggered a second fault that occurred near the one on Wednesday, which is rare in Greece,” said Thanassis Ganas, a seismologist at the Athens Observatory.
“Normally there are aftershocks only if there is a major earthquake like the one on Wednesday. It is rare that there is a second earthquake within such a short period of time,” he also told Skai radio.
Greece is located on a number of fault lines and is sporadically hit by earthquakes. But they are mostly found at sea and do not cause loss.
In October, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook the Aegean Sea between the Greek island of Samos and the city of Izmir in western Turkey. Two teenagers were killed in a building collapse on the island of Samos.