Quake hits 6 African countries

2005-12-05 22:52

Nairobi - A strong earthquake has shaken central and east Africa on Monday, causing buildings to sway in at least six nations near its epicentre on the border between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

No damage or injuries were immediately reported from the temblor that registered 7.5 on the Richter scale, according to the French Observatory of Earth Sciences in Strasbourg and magnitude 6.8, according to the US geological survey.

The two facilities said the epicentre was near the eastern side of Lake Tanganyika, which forms the border between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and struck at 12:19 GMT (15:19 local time) in most of the affected countries.

Residents of the capitals of at least six countries - Burundi, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda - reported feeling the tremors.

In the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and port city of Mombasa, tall buildings swayed as the earth shook for 15 seconds sending office workers fleeing into the streets for safety, witnesses said.

"I was sitting at my desk when I started feeling dizzy," said an AFP journalist who was in the news agency's office in the fifth floor of a 13-storey downtown building.

"Everything was swaying."

"The tremor lasted about 15 seconds, then we decided to leave the building," he added.

Kenya's private Nation television reported that some cracks had been observed in some downtown buildings after the temblor but this could not immediately be confirmed.

In the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, residents also felt the quake which forced the evacuation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which is trying suspects in that country's 1994 genocide, witnesses said.

In Rwanda itself, residents of the capital Kigali said they had felt the earth shaking as did witnesses in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, the Burundian capital of Bujumbura and several towns in the eastern DRC.

- AFP