Biggest earthquake in 40 years hits major European city

Residents were forced to sleep in cars

According to Italian seismologists, the 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit in the early hours of Thursday morning (13 March), 01:25 local time (00:25 GMT), at a depth of just 3km between Pozzuoli and Bagnoli.

The quake was felt across the region disrupting power supply in some parts of the city and has been categorised as the largest in the area for 40 years.

One woman had to be rescued from underneath rubble from a partially collapsed house at the epicentre in Bagnoli.

The region around Naples is known to be prone to earthquakes due to the city sitting on the Campi Flegrei volcanic basin in which 800,000 people live.

The tremor was the biggest in the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields) for four decades.

Six weaker aftershocks followed.

Neapolitans flooded out of their homes to take refuge in the streets and in cars, fearing further quakes.

A bell tower of a local church was damaged and several cars had their windscreens smashed.

One resident of Pozzuoli told Italian TV that residents were concerned that the tremors of the past two years marked a "different phenomenon from what has happened in the past".

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was reportedly monitoring the situation.

Schools elsewhere were closed on Thursday so that building stability checks could be carried out.

Francesca Bianco, from Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, told the Ansa news agency that "the rate of the ground rising has trebled recently, going from 1cm to 3cm per month".

Edoardo Cosenza, a civil protection councillor in Naples, said on social media that when the speed of bradyseism increased, it was time to respond: "We know it and we need to know it."