BANGLADESH – A low-magnitude tremor shook Bangladesh, the national meteorological service has said, a day after a powerful earthquake struck near the capital, Dhaka, killing at least 10 people.
Updating earlier tolls from Friday’s magnitude 5.5 earthquake, disaster management official Ishtiaqe Ahmed said on Saturday that “the number of casualties has reached 10, while a few hundred were injured”, according to the AFP news agency.
Friday’s earthquake was felt in Dhaka and neighboring districts, causing widespread destruction and panic. Omar Faruq of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said another minor jolt was recorded on Saturday at 10:36am (04:36 GMT). The epicentre of the magnitude 3.3 tremor was in Ashulia, just north of the capital, the meteorologist told AFP. Aftershocks are common after powerful earthquakes, but for some in Bangladesh, it has added to fears of an even greater disaster.
“I don’t feel safe yet, as there was another jolt this morning in Ashulia. Maybe we are next”, said Shahnaj Parvin, who lives near the epicentre of Friday’s earthquake and had never experienced anything like that before. Cracks have developed in dozens of houses in her area, she said. “I was hanging my children’s clothes on the washing line when the tremor struck”, added Parvin. The government has activated Bangladesh’s emergency operation centre to assess the scale of the damage and to coordinate relief and rescue operations.
Rubayet Kabir of the Meteorological Department’s Earthquake Observation and Research Centre said Bangladesh’s geography makes the country of 170 million people prone to earthquakes. “Some small tremors are expected after any major earthquake”, Kabir said. “There has been no massive earthquake in the last 100 years or more, but Bangladesh has been vulnerable for quite some time”, he told AFP.
On Friday, after the earthquake struck, Shadman Sakif Islam, a Dhaka resident, told Al Jazeera that “small ripples” he noticed in his coffee were followed by a “massive shake that started occurring without any warning” as the earth shook. “My chair and the table started shaking wildly, and I was stuck there for 10-15 seconds without processing what was going on”, he added. “I never felt anything like this in my whole life … I felt like riding on a boat, riding massive waves one after another”, the resident added. Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said on Friday, “It was one of the biggest earthquakes in recent history and was very close to the capital city. The entire city was in panic”. (Aljazeera)
