A magnitude 5.4 earthquake rattled central Greece early Tuesday, shaking homes in Athens but causing no reported casualties or damage, according to authorities.
The quake struck shortly after midnight local time (2130 GMT), with its epicenter located just four kilometers off the coastal resort town of Nea Styra, on the southwestern edge of Evia (Euboea), Greece’s second-largest island.
The National Observatory of Athens initially registered the tremor at magnitude 5.3 before revising it to 5.4.
Residents described the quake as strong and unsettling. “It was very intense,” said Stergios Tsirkas, mayor of the nearby city of Marathon, speaking on state broadcaster ERT.
Greece, one of Europe’s most seismically active regions, frequently experiences tremors due to its position on multiple geological fault lines in the southeastern Mediterranean.
This latest jolt follows a series of recent quakes. In May, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the island of Crete, shaking buildings as far away as Egypt.
Earlier this year, Santorini—a major tourist destination—endured weeks of exceptional seismic activity, forcing thousands of residents to temporarily evacuate.
The country’s last deadly quake occurred in October 2020 on the island of Samos. That 7.0-magnitude event killed two people in Greece and more than 100 in the Turkish city of Izmir, underscoring the region’s vulnerability to destructive seismic events.
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