Earthquake Today News: Tremors jolt Iran amid intense trade of missiles with Israel

Iran Earthquake: Tremors of 5.1 magnitude on the Richter scale jolted Iran on Friday, June 21. The quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles) some 37 kilometres (23 miles) southwest of the city of Semnan, the US Geological Survey said. This comes amid rising tensions between Iran and Israel which are exchanging missiles.

Iran's news agency IRNA reported no casualties and only “minimal damage” and said that tremors of 5.5 magnitude "shook the area around the city of Sorkheh in Semnan province".\

Iran is among the most seismically active countries in the world due to its position along the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt, where the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates converge. This tectonic setting leads to frequent earthquakes, with the country experiencing an average of about 2,100 quakes each year, including roughly 15 to 16 that reach a magnitude of 5.0 or higher.

Earlier quakes in Iran

Iran saw numerous notable temblors as a magnitude 4.2 earthquake hit near Kashmar in Razavi Khorasan Province on June 19 while on June 17, another 4.2-magnitude quake struck near Borazjan in Bushehr Province.

Israel-Iran conflict

Tel Aviv was rocked early Thursday when an Iranian-fired missile struck the base of a high-rise on Jabotinsky Street in Ramat Gan, just 200 m from the city’s diamond exchange. Residents described the blast as feeling like a “nuclear explosion” or even an “earthquake".

Locals saw scenes of destruction in Ramat Gan. Asher Adiv, a 69-year-old, a nearby resident told the Guardian, “It was like an atom bomb. An earthquake."

The missile was part of a larger salvo of around 30 ballistic missiles fired by Iran, aimed at central and southern Israel. One of the most significant impacts was a direct hit on Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Israel’s primary hospital in the south, where dozens were reported injured, including six in serious condition.

(With AFP inputs)