– Half the city is gone – VG

Central Croatia was hit by a very serious earthquake on Tuesday. The earthquake affected the city of Petrinja, located 45 kilometers southeast of the capital, Zagreb.

It had a magnitude of 6.3, which is the strongest earthquake on record in Croatian history, according to seismologist Iva Dasović.

Authorities said at least seven people had been confirmed dead Tuesday night, reports. Sky News.

Among the dead is a 13-year-old girl.

Resident Dinko Radučević searched the ruins for his own daughter when he found the 13-year-old girl. He tells the 24sata newspaper that he tried to save his life for 40 minutes before the ambulance arrived.

The same newspaper describes the city as a war zone, and that time stopped at 12:20 when the earthquake hit the city.

Then came a new minor earthquake, followed by panic.

I don’t know the extent of the damage

Soldiers, firefighters and police officers rushed to the scene to help people out of the ruins.

– It is difficult to describe the helplessness on people’s faces, writes the Jutarnji newspaper.

– The whole city was practically destroyed, they write more.

See the images in the gallery below.

At least 26 people have been hospitalized with injuries after the earthquake.

The authorities do not rule out that more dead are among the ruins.

Many people have not been counted, and humanitarian workers are now searching for survivors who may have been trapped under collapsed buildings. Screams have been heard from destroyed houses, and a woman was found alive Tuesday afternoon four hours after the earthquake, NTB reports.

Extensive damage

Darinko Dumbovic, the mayor of the city, says that half of the city has been demolished, to the daily 24sata.

– This is like Hiroshima. Half the city is gone, he tells HTT TV.

-We remove people from the cars, we do not know how many are affected, there are dead and injured, he adds.

140,000 people were killed when an American atomic bomb left Hiroshima in Japan in rubble in 1945.

An engineer on the spot tells a local newspaper that the city looks horrible:

– We saw a dead child in the square. The center of Petrinja is destroyed.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and several other ministers visited the city a few hours after the earthquake.

– Most of downtown Petrinja is a red zone, which means that most of the buildings are useless, says Plenkovic.

The entourage also made their way to the neighboring town of Sisak, where a hospital collapsed. The patients were evacuated to other hospitals by helicopters and ambulances.

The people of Petrinja are very affected by what happened.

Marica Pavlovic told the AP news agency that the earthquake felt worse than the war.

– It was terrible, a shock. You don’t know what to do, run or hide, he says.

Sense outside the country

The earthquake could be felt far from the city. The Croatian Defense Ministry, which is located 45 kilometers from the city, was damaged, reports N1.

The earthquake was so violent that several neighboring countries felt it. Among other things, Serbia, Slovenia and Bosnia have felt the great earthquake.

The parliament building in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, 150 km away, shook violently. A video from a television broadcast of the parliament shows politicians who may have sought refuge.

The quake lasted for half a minute, followed by a minor aftershock, but several citizens of the Petrinja area said it seemed to last “forever.” Write the Jutanji newspaper.

Also on Monday, the area was hit by an earthquake, which measured at 5.2. Nobody lost their lives in this earthquake.

Tuesday’s earthquake was much stronger: the magnitude was measured at 6.3, which according to Croatian seismologist Kresimir Kuk is “extremely strong.”