Shaking in the northern West Bank, felt Friday evening and Saturday morning, was ‘definitely’ a series of two earthquakes and was not the result of explosions, Jalal Dabeek of an-Najah National University said, on Sunday.Dabeek, who chairs an-Najah University’s Center for Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction, told Ma’an News Agency that fears the quakes were caused by explosions were not justified, highlighting that the center’s Seismic Risk Mitigation department detected earthquakes.
He added that Jordanian experts also detected the earthquakes, although Jordanians did not report feeling them.
Dabeek said that residents of the northern mountain of Nablus felt the earthquakes, while in the southern mountain they were not felt. He explained that the disparity was due to the fact that the first earthquake occurred 3.5 kilometers underground and the second occurred 2.8 kilometers underground.
Asked why a huge blast was heard following the second earthquake in northern Nablus, Dabeek said that it resulted from large rocks that had crashed underground.
‘If it was caused by an explosion, it would have been heard in the south as well,’ he added, allaying initial fears of the cause of the sounds.
