4.2-scale earthquake rocks southern Iraq

6 earthquakes have hit the same region since December Baghdad – Jaafar Al Nasrawi Iraq’s meteorological authority has announced that an earthquake registering 4.2 on the Richter scale has hit an area of southern Iraq, marking the sixth earthquake there since December. Director of the Dhi Qar meteorological authority, Ali Tarek, told Arabstoday: "The earthquake took place in the evening in the area between al-Fajr and Kalaat Sukkar. We are currently awaiting the results of quake analysis at the central laboratory in the Baghdad seismology department."
"According to initial assessments,” Tarek said, “the quake is stronger than the one that took place on December 19.”
"This is the sixth in a series of earthquakes the area has experienced," Tarek noted, adding that all earthquakes took place at a similar time, between 1900 hrs and 2000 hrs.
Al-Rifai, which is 80 kilometres north of Nasiriyah, experienced three earthquakes on December 19 followed by two more on January 20 and 21.
"None of the earthquakes that have taken place have been aftershocks, and their epicentre has always been in the vicinity of al-Rifai, at distances ranging from four to 15 kilometres,” Tarek said, meanwhile revealing that each seismic incident occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres.
Tarek dismissed reports that seismic disturbances were a result of oil excavations in the region.
"There is no direct link between oil extraction and the occurrence of these earthquakes,” he said. “The oil wells in the area do not exceed three kilometres in depth, whereas the quakes occur much deeper.”