People gather on a street after an earthquake near Zagreb, Croatia.
Zagreb:
A powerful 6.4 magnitude earthquake toppled buildings in central Croatia on Tuesday, striking near the town of Petrinja, where rescue teams raced to comb through debris.
The earthquake, one of the strongest to hit Croatia in recent years, collapsed the rooftops of Petrinja, home to some 20,000 people, and left the streets strewn with bricks and other debris.
“We are taking people out of the cars, we do not know if we have dead or injured,” Darinko Dumbovic, mayor of Petrinja, told regional broadcaster N1.
“There is a general panic, people are looking for their loved ones,” he added.
Rescue teams and the army were deployed to search for the trapped residents, with no casualties initially reported.
“I’m scared, I can’t reach anyone at home because the phone lines are dead,” a concerned woman in Petrinja told N1.
The earthquake was also felt in the capital Zagreb, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the epicenter, where roof tiles were ripped from the roofs and terrified residents gathered in the streets, according to an AFP reporter.
The electricity in the city center was cut off.
Two tremors
The earthquake, which occurred around 1130 GMT according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), shook Petrinja just one day after a smaller earthquake struck the city, causing some damage to buildings.
The tremors reverberated in neighboring countries, including Serbia, Slovenia and as far away as the Austrian capital Vienna.
As a precautionary measure, Slovenia took steps to shut down the Krsko nuclear power plan that it co-owns with Croatia.
European Union leaders said they were closely following the “devastating earthquake” in member state Croatia.
“We are ready to support,” the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote on Twitter, adding that the bloc’s civil protection team was “ready to travel to Croatia as soon as the situation allows.”
Charles Michel, President of the European Council, said that “our thoughts are with the injured and front-line workers.”
In March, Zagreb was damaged by a 5.3 magnitude earthquake, the most powerful to hit the capital in decades.
The Balkan region is on large faults and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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