Magnitude 4.7 quake strikes near Italy's Naples, causing outages and damage

NAPLES, Italy, July 31 - A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck the Campi Flegrei area near the southern Italian city of Naples on Friday, causing power outages, disrupting train and metro services and damaging some buildings, authorities said.

The quake, recorded at 7:46 p.m. (1746 GMT), had its epicentre in the Campi Flegrei area to the west of Naples at a depth of about 3 km (2 miles), Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said.

The Italian fire service said there were reports of minor damage to buildings in and around Naples, but added that their crews had not received any immediate requests to help or rescue residents.

Local rail and metro services were suspended as a precaution, local officials said.

Italian media said it was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the area, with people in some neighbourhoods rushing into the street as the tremors hit.

Campi Flegrei, a densely populated volcanic caldera encompassing a large part of western Naples, has experienced increasingly frequent seismic activity in recent years, prompting the government to step up monitoring.

Although small earthquakes are common in the area, stronger tremors have heightened fears of a repeat of the seismic crisis that struck Campi Flegrei in the early 1980s, causing widespread disruption and forcing thousands of people to leave their homes.

Earthquakes are relatively frequent in Italy.

A series of powerful quakes struck central Italy in 2016, devastating parts of Lazio, Umbria and the Marche regions, killing around 300 people.

The deadliest in recent decades was a magnitude 6.9 quake that struck the Irpinia area of southern Italy in November 1980, killing about 2,700 people and devastating hundreds of towns. REUTERS