The Centre Sismologique Euro-Méditerranéen recorded a Magnitude 5.7 Earthquake at a depth of 5 km, roughly 42 km to the southeast of the city of Mostar in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, slightly after 11.05 pm local time (slightly after 9.05 pm GMT) on Friday 22 April 2022. People have felt this event across the western Balkan Peninsula and much of Italy, with reports of damage from several towns and cities in the region. A 28-year-old woman died and several other people were injured in the town of Stolac, near Mostar, when a boulder dislodged from a hillside by the quake crashed into a house.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the other states of the western Balkan Peninsula, form the eastern margin of the Adriatic Plate, a piece of the African Plate that has broken away and is now wedged into the southern part of the Eurasian Plate. This is being squeezed by the impact of Africa into Europe from the south, which is pushing western Italy, which sits on the Eurasian Plate, to the east, and Greece and Turkey, which sit on the Aegean and Anatolian Plates, to the west. This squeezing leads to uplift around the margins of the Adriatic Plate, in the Apennines Mountain Range of central Italy and the mountain ranges of the west Balkan Peninsula.
See also...
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Twitter.