Ammon News - by The Jordan Times

AMMAN — A quake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale affected the port city of Aqaba at around 3pm, but no damages or casualties were recorded as a result., officials said on Saturday.

According to the Natural Resources Authority's director general, Mousa Zyoud, the quake, which extended to the south of the Suez Canal city, 140km from Aqaba, was 10 kilometres deep, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Jordan lies along the seismically active Dead Sea Transform Fault, with estimates predicting a major earthquake every 100 years. Seismic activity is normal in the Jordan Rift Valley area, which extends from northern Jordan down to the Dead Sea and is part of the Great Rift Valley that stretches from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey down to the Zambezi Valley in southern Africa.

In January, 2008, an earthquake registering 4.5 on the Richter scale was felt in Mafraq and parts of Zarqa. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

In late 2007, seismologists recorded an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.5 in the Jordan Valley, while a 4.6 earthquake shook Amman and mountainous areas overlooking the northern Jordan Valley in 2004.

According to Jordan Seismological Observatory records, the last destructive earthquake to hit the Kingdom was in 1927.

About 300 people were killed in that quake, which hit Jerusalem and nearby Jericho. A similar quake in 1837, measuring seven on the Richter scale and with an epicentre in the Hula Valley, today in northern Israel, devastated the town of Safed and killed some 4,000 people, according to news agencies.