At least 4 dead, 150 injured after most powerful quake in decades strikes Albania

At least four people have been killed and 150 injured after the most powerful earthquake to hit Albania in decades rocked the country in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The 6.4-magnitude tremor struck, causing several buildings to cave in and burying residents in the rubble.

According to the country’s defense ministry, a man and a woman were killed when a building collapsed in Thumane, 22 miles north of the capital Tirana.

Another man died after jumping from his home to escape the shaking building in Kurbin, 30 miles north of the capital, Albanian officials confirmed, while the fourth victim was pulled out from under a collapsed building in Durres.

The quake was centred 19 miles northwest of Tirana, with the worst of the damage reported in the Adriatic coastal town of Durres. Dramatic video posted to social media from the town showed at least one large building there reduced to rubble.

Other footage showed buildings with large cracks and fallen masonry, including one apartment with most of a bedroom wall missing.

A spokesperson for the ministry confirmed that people remained trapped beneath debris in the town, saying firefighters and army staff were working to rescue them.

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Several smaller tremors were recorded in the hour before the main quake, which was also felt across the Balkans and in the southern Italian region of Puglia.

The images of collapsed or semi-collapsed buildings in urban areas suggested Tuesday’s quake was more powerful than one in 1979 which razed a neighbourhood of the northern town of Shkoder, bordering Montenegro.

Neither of those two earlier earthquakes caused any fatalities. The Balkan nation is the poorest country in Europe, with an average income of less than a third of the European Union average.

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