An offshore earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 rattled central Greece early on Tuesday morning, with strong tremors felt as far as the capital city of Athens.

The quake, which occurred around 00:30 a.m. local time (2130 GMT), had its epicenter in the sea, just four kilometers off the coast of the resort of Nea Styra on the island of Evia.

According to the National Observatory of Athens, the earthquake’s magnitude was initially measured at 5.3 but was later revised to 5.4. The mayor of the nearby city of Marathon, Stergios Tsirkas, described the quake as “very intense”, in comments on ERT television.

This year alone, the country has experienced a 6.1-magnitude quake off the island of Crete in May and a major seismic swarm on the tourist island of Santorini earlier in January and February.

Thousands of tremors there caused several thousand residents to flee, but they have since returned home.

Situated on several faults in the southeastern Mediterranean, Greece is regularly hit by earthquakes.

The last deadly quake there struck in October 2020 on the island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea.

With a magnitude of seven, it killed two people in Samos and over 100 in the Turkish port city of Izmir.