Powerful Aftershocks Rock Croatia Amid Prayers and Desperation

by Stefan Bos, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Powerful aftershocks added to the misery in central Croatia on Wednesday, a day after the nation’s strongest earthquake on record killed seven people and injured dozens.

Pope Francis said he prayed for victims in heavily Catholic Croatia, where at times church bells rang at unscheduled moments as the earth shook violently.

The strongest, 4.7-magnitude tremor was recorded near the heavily damaged town of Petrinja, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the capital, Zagreb.

“We can’t say ‘Good morning,’ It is not good,” Petrinja mayor Darinko Dumbovic told Croatian radio. “We had the third and fourth tremors this morning, short ones but strong. What hasn’t fallen off before is falling now from the ruins of Petrinja.”

He added: “Fear has crept into people.”

Several other nearby towns were also in ruins.

Authorities warned that the coronavirus could spread in crowded shelters. Many people are in tents, their cars, or military barracks.

Croatian officials said a 12-year-old girl died in Petrinja, a town of some 25,000 people. At least 26 people were hospitalized with injuries.

Tuesday’s quake, the strongest in Croatia since the introduction of the modern seismic measurement system, was felt throughout the region, including neighboring Bosnia, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Even in Hungary’s capital Budapest, some 395 kilometers (245 miles) away from Peyrinja, there were reports of people feeling the quake’s impact.

The central Croatian region was also struck by a 5.2 earthquake on Monday.

A resident said the aftershocks kept him awake: “It was a rough night, I slept maybe half an hour.”

In the hard-hit village of Majske Poljane, where five people died, a little boy could be seen sleeping in a van on a chilly morning,

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