A major earthquake of magnitude 6.3 hit Croatia, killing at least seven people - including a 12-year-old girl - and causing widespread damage in a town near the capital, Zagreb.

Firefighters rescued a man and a boy trapped in a car buried in rubble in Petrinja after buildings collapsed, leaving the streets littered with fallen bricks and covered in dust.

Officials said a 12-year-old girl died in Petrinja, a town of some 25,000 people. Another six people were killed in nearly destroyed villages close to the town, according to HRT state television. At least 26 people were hospitalised, six with serious injuries, officials said, adding that many more people remained unaccounted for.

"My town has been completely destroyed. We have dead children," the town's mayor, Darinko Dumbovic, said in a statement to HRT.

"This is like Hiroshima - half of the city no longer exists. The city has been demolished, the city is no longer liveable. We need help."

The Croatian military was deployed in Petrinja to help with the rescue operation and the Croatian Red Cross described the situation as "very serious" as it dispatched crisis teams to the area.

Croatia's prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, travelled to the town to oversee the efforts to accommodate homeless residents in local hotels and army barracks after what he described as a "devastating earthquake which was felt in many parts of Croatia".

He tweeted: "We mobilised all available services to help people and clear the destroyed parts. The most important thing now is to save human lives."

Rest of article here.

Two more strong earthquakes struck Croatia on Wednesday morning, the first measuring 4.7 and the second 4.8 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre in the Petrinja area.

The first hit at 6.15 a.m. and the second a little later, the head of the Seismological Survey, Ines Ivancic, told Croatian Radio.

She said the ground "will rock for a long time. Tuesday's earthquake was devastating and will certainly be followed by a long series of earthquakes, including, quite certainly, stronger ones."

Ivancic said weaker tremors like those today would certainly affect the buildings in Petrinja and Sisak which were damaged in Tuesday's 6.2 quake, which has claimed seven lives and caused enormous damage.

Ivancic said Petrinja was struck by "an enormous quantity" of smaller earthquakes since Monday. The ground is shaking almost every minute, she said, including at least 25 to 30 tremors measuring above 3 on the Richter scale.

• 'No evidence' that asymptomatic Covid-19 cases were infectious, analysis of post-lockdown Wuhan concludes
• CDC: No need for asymptomatic people to get tested
• WHO walks back comments on asymptomatic coronavirus spread, says much is still unknown
• WHO does a 180, now says asymptomatic spread of coronavirus 'very rare'
• Study claiming coronavirus can be transmitted by asymptomatic people was flawed

• Sweden records highest death tally in 150 years in first six months of 2020 - put in perspective
• Sweden denies entry to migrants from Greece's Moria camp, is a radical policy change on the cards?

Video footage has emerged showing the exact moment an RV exploded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The blast was apparently preceded by a pre-recorded warning, urging bystanders to evacuate.

A bomb squad was heading to the scene — just blocks from the historic Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry — when the blast took place around 6:30 a.m., knocking one cop to the ground.

There was no immediate evidence that a shooting had actually taken place, Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron said.

Widespread 911 issues in the Nashville area were reported after AT&T wireless and internet service were disrupted on Friday hours following a massive explosion downtown.

AT&T internet and phone service were disrupted in the area about 12 p.m. Friday.

Users around the country reported disruptions in service, but there was a concentration in the Nashville area and Middle Tennessee, growing in reach from Kentucky to Alabama as more reports came in.

© DownDetector.com
An AT&T outage was reported in Nashville and Middle Tennessee hours after an explosion took place near an AT&T facility.

A handful of local police departments reported the outage was disrupting 911 access, including some non-emergency lines, in their jurisdictions. [...]

Nashville International Airport announced Friday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. that the Federal Aviation Administration had halted flights out of the airport until later this afternoon. [...]

An AT&T spokesman confirmed the outage was linked to the explosion:

"Service for some customers in Nashville and the surrounding areas may be affected by damage to our facilities from the explosion this morning. We are in contact with law enforcement and working as quickly and safely as possible to restore service," said Jim Greer, an AT&T representative.

© downdetector.com

Investigators have found human remains in close vicinity of the blast site in Nashville, Tennessee, according to AP and CNN sources familiar with the ongoing probe, but it is unclear if they might belong to a suspect or a victim.

One of the residents is Betsy Williams, 64, who runs a vacation rental business in a building her family owns across the street from where the RV was parked.

She was sleeping in her third-floor apartment on 2nd Avenue North when she was awakened by the sound of gunfire around 4:30 or 5 a.m., she said.

"It sounded like it was from an automatic weapon because it was rapid fire," she said, adding that she heard several loud bursts of gunfire, prompting her to call 911.

Williams' son, who was visiting from Georgia for the holiday and staying in one of the vacation units, noticed the RV parked across the street and thought it seemed suspicious, she said. Then she heard a voice coming from the vehicle warning that it was about to explode.

"It was, 'Evacuate now. This vehicle has a bomb. This vehicle will explode,'" she said.

When the message changed to a countdown, warning that the vehicle would explode in 15 minutes, then 14 minutes, she woke up her 85-year-old sister, who lives in Arizona but was visiting for the holiday, staying in another apartment. She put her cat, Mavis, into a carrier and she and her family got on the elevator around the time the message was giving an 11-minute warning.

They ran to her car, which was parked a block away, and drove across the river to watch from a distance. When nothing happened after 15 or 20 minutes, they started driving back home, she said. That's when they saw the explosion.

"A fireball went up above the AT&T building," she said. "It was a hellacious blast. It was just a big old boom and it blew out the front of those buildings and caused a crater in the street."

Williams and her family are now staying in a hotel with just the clothes they were wearing when they evacuated, unable to buy a change of clothes since the police have the downtown area shut down.

"I said I wanted to spend Christmas day in my pajamas all day long but I didn't really mean that," she joked.

She's not sure when she'll be able to get back home, or if anything will be left.

"It's terrible," she said. "All of my stuff. All of our Christmas presents. We had all of our stuff laid out, ready to have Christmas stockings and Christmas breakfast and open our gifts and spend all day having a really nice, relaxed Christmas, sipping on a little champagne, and now we're not doing any of that."

Still, she said, she's grateful that whoever planted the bomb issued the evacuation warning, enabling her family to escape with their lives.

"Thank God for that," she said.

Williams' spouse Kim Madlom, said they first called 911 about 5:30 a.m. after hearing what sounded like gunshots. About half an hour later, Madlom began to hear audio alerting them to the bomb.

"We went all the way down to our basement area and went out the back door on First Avenue because we were afraid to get on Second Avenue," Madlom said. "Because we also were concerned that we heard gunshots that, you know, we might be, somebody might be trying to lure us out."

Madlom believes whoever set off the bomb had given residents a "grace period" in case they didn't leave before the 15-minute warning was over.

"I do want to say in retrospect, we've talked about it, we feel like those gunshots were a recording as well. Not actual gunshots," Madlom said. "I mean, we feel like it was a recording because there was the sound the pattern to it. By the third time we heard it was exactly the same."