- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
(CNN) - An earthquake of magnitude 5.1 shook southwestern Iran early Friday morning in a region that hosts the country's first nuclear power plant.
The telluric movement occurred just after 5 am local time, 44 kilometers southeast of the city of Borazjan in the province of Bushehr, at a depth of 38.3 kilometers, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
The Bushehr nuclear plant is located on the Iranian coast southwest of Borazjan, not far from the epicenter of the earthquake.
Opened in August 2010, Bushehr is not only Iran's first nuclear plant, but the first civilian reactor in the Middle East.
So far there has been no official news about whether or not the plant was affected by the earthquake.
Look: Iran violates the nuclear agreement again after 40 years of hostage-taking
History of mortal earthquakes
Iran is no stranger to tectonic activity. The country is in a major fault between the plates of Arabia and Eurasia and has experienced many earthquakes in the past.
In November, at least five people died and another 330 were injured after a magnitude 5.9 earthquake in northwestern Iran.
Last year, an earthquake that occurred near the Iran-Iraq border in November killed at least 361 people.
More than 400 people died and thousands were injured when a powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck near the Iran-Iraq border in November 2017.
The deadliest earthquake of this century occurred in 2003 when an earthquake of magnitude 6.6 struck the city of Bam, in the southeast of the country, killing some 26,000 people.
- Helen Regan and Sharif Paget of CNN contributed reports.
Nuclear energy
