Many people in and around the Italian city of Naples have spent the night on the streets and in their cars after an earthquake shook buildings and brought rubble crashing down.
Italian seismologists said the 4.4-magnitude tremor struck at 01:25 local time (00:25 GMT) on Thursday at a shallow depth of 3km (two miles), on the coast between Pozzuoli and Bagnoli.
The quake was felt across Naples, and power supplies were disrupted in parts of the city.
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) said that there was “no evidence” that an eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius was imminent.
In Bagnoli, close to the quake’s epicentre, a woman was pulled from the rubble of a partially collapsed house with light injuries.
Naples sits on the Campi Flegrei, a volcanic basin that makes the area in southern Italy prone to quakes.
Thursday’s earthquake was felt in several areas of the Campania region.
The scale of the tremor was as big as a quake in May 2024, and it was the biggest in the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields) for 40 years.
It was followed by as many as six weaker aftershocks.
People left their homes and gathered on the streets of Naples, fearing more tremors.
The bell tower of a local church was damaged and several cars had their windscreens smashed.
In Pozzuoli, one resident told Italian TV that residents were concerned that the tremors of the past two years marked a “different phenomenon from what has happened in the past”.
Along the coast, the mayor of Bacoli, Josi Gerardo Della Ragione, said it had been a difficult night, although his town had not suffered damage.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was constantly monitoring the situation and was in close contact with her colleagues, her officials said.
Schools elsewhere were closed on Thursday so that building stability checks could be carried out.
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The volcanic basin, which is believed to have been created after an eruption tens of thousands of years ago, is home to more than 800,000 people.
Local officials are especially worried by the increased speed of “bradyseism” – phases of ground movement that lead to a change in the height of the surface of the land.
Francesca Bianco from INGV told the Ansa news agency that “the rate of the ground rising has trebled recently, going from 1cm to 3cm per month”.
Edoardo Cosenza, a civil protection councillor in Naples, said on social media that when the speed of bradyseism increased, it was time to respond: “We know it and we need to know it.”
Source: BBC
