Hani Zahran, director of agency’s National Center for Earthquakes and Volcanoes, said the quake was recorded at 7:10 a.m.
"The tremor measuring 3.9 on the Richter Scale registered in Harrah Al-Shaqa on Thursday is the strongest since the subterranean tremors subsided about seven months ago,” said Zahran.
A series of earthquakes in May and June in the same region last year sent hundreds of residents fleeing their homes in the Al-Ais area.
Geologists say earthquakes, although considered mild to moderate, have been frequent in the Arabian Peninsula in recent years because the region is located near active seismic borders on both the northeastern and western fronts.
As explained by geologists in a previous report of Asharq Al Awsat, sister publication of Arab News, the Arab plate — which includes the GCC states, Yemen and parts of Iran and greater Syria — is in a collision course with the Iranian plate (the Zagros Mountains) and the Turkish plate (the mountains of Anatolia).
This causes the Arab plate to expand by two centimeters every year to the Red Sea area, causing friction between the two plates in the eastern region of the Arab plate.
A network of seismic stations have been put in place by the Saudi Geological Survey in various parts of the Kingdom to monitor earthquakes.
