OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 12 February 2004 — A moderate earthquake rumbled through the Middle East yesterday, sending jitters throughout the region and causing minor damage to the Israeli Parliament. No serious injuries were reported.
The quake lasted for up to 20 seconds, shaking Israel, Jordan and the West Bank and Gaza. It was also felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.
Israeli seismologists were quoted by public radio as saying the quake hit at 10:10 a.m. (0810 GMT) and that it measured 4.5 on the open-ended Richter scale. They placed the epicenter north of the Dead Sea.
At the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, investigators found cracks in the ceilings near Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office and in the main auditorium.
Lawmakers sitting in committee meetings feared a large bomb had gone off, Israel Army radio reported, and a parliamentary debate was canceled.
High-rise buildings in Tel Aviv, shopping malls and schools throughout the country were evacuated. Israel’s Channel Ten TV reported minor damage to four apartments in Jerusalem.
In the West Bank, the quake caused items to fall off shelves in stores in Jericho. Schoolchildren in Ramallah and Bethlehem were sent home early.
The quake was felt for about 20 seconds in the Jordanian capital of Amman, sending frightened residents out of their homes.
“It felt like doomsday,” said Samia Bakhit, walking barefoot and in her nightgown as she dragged her 5-year-old son Yousef out of their home in an Amman suburb.
Frightened residents milled in the streets for about an hour after the quake before returning indoors. Some government agencies and private companies asked residents to evacuate their buildings, fearing aftershocks.
Jordanian Prime Minister Faisal Al-Fayez announced that all schools across the kingdom were closed after four girls were slightly wounded in stampedes at two schools near Irbid, 80 kilometers north of Amman.
Irbid’s Civil Defense chief, Col. Ali Nawasrah, said the girls were discharged from a hospital after brief medical treatment. He said the stampede was caused by panic among students.
In the Jordan Valley, the quake caused cracks in a court building and at least seven houses, according to Balqa Governor Thamer Al-Fayez.
Landslides were reported in the western Ma’in area, causing no damage or injuries, said Azmi Tamimi, director of the Ma’in Spa.
A source at the Syrian meteorology agency in Damascus reported several smaller aftershocks but no damage. On Sunday, several small quakes of magnitude were felt in northeast Syria.
The region is located along the Great Rift Valley, which runs for 3,000 miles between Syria and Mozambique and passes through the Dead Sea, below Jerusalem’s eastern hills.
The fault line was caused by the separation of African and Eurasian tectonic plates 35 million years ago, a split that weakened the Earth’s crust.
About 35 miles to the north, another fault line cuts the land east to west from the Mediterranean port of Haifa with the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus before reaching the Jordan River.
On Dec. 31, a small earthquake of magnitude 3.7 was measured in the Dead Sea region, but no damage was recorded.
The last big earthquake in the area was in 1927, when a magnitude 6.3 quake centered near Jericho in the West Bank, about 25 kilometers east of Jerusalem, killed more than 200 people.
