Zagreb:
A effective 6.4 magnitude earthquake collapsed buildings in central Croatia on Tuesday, striking close to the town of Petrinja exactly where rescue teams raced to comb by means of the rubble.
The tremor, which struck at a depth of 10 kilometres at about 1130 GMT according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), was also felt strongly some 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the epicentre in the capital Zagreb, exactly where panicked residents raced onto the streets, according to an AFP reporter.
“We are pulling people from cars, we don’t know if we have dead or injured,” the mayor of Petrinja Darinko Dumbovic told regional broadcaster N1.
“There is general panic, people are looking for their loved ones.”
Images of the town, which is house to about 20,000, showed collapsed roofs and streets strewn with bricks and other debris.
The tremor comes a single day immediately after a smaller sized earthquake struck Petrinja, causing some harm to buildings.
The Balkan area lies on important fault lines and is on a regular basis hit by earthquakes.
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