OVERNIGHT QUAKE CAUSES FRESH DAMAGE TO STON AREA

ZAGREB, Sept 21 (Hina) - The earthquake which shook the Ston and Slano area of southern Croatia overnight has caused fresh damage to residential and commercial buildings, Nikola Djuracic of the Dubrovnik crisis centre said Saturday morning. Djuracic said that 80 percent of families had been evacuated because their houses were no longer habitable. He said that the local population had been accommodated in 110 caravans and five converted containers. Relief aid supplies were coming in regularly but there was a shortage of fresh meat and potatoes, he added. About 100 more containers were necessary to put up the residents of 19 surrounding villages along the Bosnian border which had also been affected by the quake. Since September 5, the Croatian Seismological Institute had recorded several hundred earthquakes, of which people had felt about a hundred, seismologist Ivica Sovic said. It could be assumed that the ground was calming because magnitudes were decreasing, Sovic said. (hina) vm 211053 MET sep 96