2 Quakes Kill 19 in Algeria; Over 100 Reported Injured
Two earthquakes about 15 minutes apart struck northern Algeria on Sunday evening, killing at least 19 people and injuring over 100, authorities said.
Most of those killed were in the village of Tipasa about 40 miles west of Algiers and in the town of Churchell on the Mediterranean coast 60 miles west of the capital, said an Interior Ministry statement transmitted by the official news agency APS.
In Algiers, 26 people were injured when walls collapsed and several fires broke out. At least one building collapsed in the old Turkish-built Casbah quarter of the city.
The National Center of Astronomy and Geophysics said the earthquakes, at 8:15 p.m. and 8:27 p.m., were both estimated at magnitude 6.0. It said the epicenters appeared to be about 35 miles south of Algiers, a city of 2.4 million people. The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., put the epicenter 25 miles west of Algiers in the Mediterranean.
State-run radio appealed to people to remain calm.
Residents of some Algiers neighborhoods fled their apartments when the first quake hit. It lasted about 30 seconds, and the second temblor lasted about 15 seconds.
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