Al-Nahar Algerian TV announced that a 4.8 magnitude aftershock followed the earthquake in Tebessa. This aftershock threatened an area 26 km southeast of Nefrin, located on the border with Tunisia. In January of last year, Dr. Shafiq Aidi, a geophysics expert and head of the Earthquake Monitoring Department at the National Network, revealed the secret behind the intense seismic activity. The geophysics specialist commented on the seismic activity occurring in several Algerian provinces, saying: “Every year, a different province experiences intense earthquake activity, which is considered normal for Algeria’s tectonic location.” Aidi added in a statement to Al-Nahar that sometimes there is intense activity in a certain area, noting that they are currently monitoring this activity. “Additional stations have been deployed in the region to detect every small movement we can with the small network,” he said. Algeria occasionally experiences tremors and earthquakes, the most severe of which was the one that struck Boumerdes province in the north of the country in May 2003, with a magnitude of 6.8, killing 2,277 people and causing significant material losses and massive destruction in the area.
