ATHENS – There were no injuries nor damage reported despite its intensity as a 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit off the western Peloponnese, centered beneath the seabed near the Strofades islands, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Greece’s third largest city Patras.

It struck early March 29, said the Athens Geodynamic Institute, earthquakes common in Greece of small sizes, this one called moderate.

Athanasios Ganas, the Director of Research at the Geodynamic Institute of the National Observatory of Athens, said there was no reason for alarm despite the intensity, because of where it hit, felt as far away as Crete and even Malta.

“Residents of the Ionian and Peloponnese need not be concerned,” he said. “The magnitude is within expectations for the area where the quake took place,” he said, explaining that it occurred at the boundary between the Eurasian and African plates.

Efthymios Lekkas, a Professor of Geology and Disaster management at Athens University, told Kathimerini that it was just a “shallow event” that “appears not to have impacted building infrastructures or people.”

(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report)