Turkmen officials would not confirm a report by Chinese state television which said the quake had killed 11 people and injured five. The television report monitored in Beijing gave no details and did not specify the source of the information. Earlier, an official with the China Seismological Bureau told Reuters the earthquake measured 7.4 on the open-ended Richter scale. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, which monitored the quake, said earlier today it measured 7.2. on the Richter scale at the epicenter. Residents of Ashgabat, situated in a seismic zone, barely reacted to the tremors and most of them calmly stayed in their homes.
Small tremors are common in the country.
The Turkmenistan spokesman said the quake measured 5 on the 12-point scale in the oil refining town of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea but no casualties or major damage were recorded. The quake was also felt in other parts of the former Soviet Union, including Azerbaijan's capital Baku and the Armenian town of Spitak, destroyed by a 10-point quake in 1988 which killed 25,000 people.