A man died and at least 100 people were injured in the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane when a strong earthquake measuring over five points on the open-ended Richter scale hit Kosovo today.
The dead man was Mehmet Salibichaj, a local barber from Gnjilane, the Beta news agency reported today.
The minaret of a local mosque collapsed, while a number of buildings in the town were damaged, it said.
The quake was felt over most of Kosovo and even further afield, including in the capitals of Serbia and Macedonia.
People ran out into the streets in several Kosovo towns when the quake hit, at 12.52 p.m. (10.52 a.m. Irish time) according to Mr Syl Tahirsylaj of the Kosovo weather service.
He said the intensity of the quake was 5.4 points on the Richter scale, equivalent to eight on the 12-point Mercalli scale, and its epicentre was Gnjilane.
However the head of Serbia's seismological institute, Mr Slavica Radulovic, put the intensity at 5.1 points on the Richter scale and seven on the Mercalli one.
He said the epicenter was in Kosovo, 280 km south of Belgrade, "most probably between the (Kosovo) towns of Vitina and Urosevac."
There were no immediate reports from the two towns.
The quake was felt in almost all of the UN-administered Serbian province, as well as throughout much of Serbia, including the capital Belgrade and also in Skopje, capital of neighbouring Macedonia.
It caused panic in Skopje, with residents running out into the streets.
AFP