On April 4 and 5 many people in Malta felt two strong tremors but the two earthquakes are unrelated. The first occurred in southern Greece at 111 km depth with a magnitude of 5.6 on the Richter scale, while the latter took place in southern Italy at 64 km depth and with a magnitude of 4.6 (green circles on map).

The quakes took place a considerable distance from Malta, 844 and 383 km respectively, but the felt shaking was probably due to the depth of the earthquakes, which occurred on the surface of subduction plates.

The University’s Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit (SMRU) received about 100 felt reports from various localities such as Msida, Birkirkara, Marsascala, Sliema, Valletta and Żejtun. The public is invited to report their experience of any earthquake through the website http://seismic.research.um.edu.mt .

Two other small earthquakes struck close to the Maltese islands along the Malta Graben on April 2 and 18 (inset map, red stars). The earthquakes had a very weak magnitude and were not felt.

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