July earthquakes rise 168% across Iraq

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraq and nearby border areas recorded 102 earthquakes in July, up from 38 a year earlier, with 57 inside the country and 32 concentrated in Kirkuk, the General Authority for Meteorology and Seismic Monitoring announced on Thursday.

The tremors ranged from magnitude 1.1 to 5.3 at depths of six to 36 kilometers. Kirkuk’s July total was twice the 16 earthquakes recorded across the province during all of 2025, with many residents feeling the activity but no casualties or notable damage reported.

Al-Sulaymaniyah followed with eight tremors around Kalar, Darbandikhan, and Sharbazher, while five were recorded near Khanaqin in Diyala province. Erbil and Nineveh registered four each, and one occurred in each of Wasit, Maysan, Basra, and Dhi Qar.

Another 45 earthquakes occurred outside Iraq or near its borders, including 29 in the Iranian provinces of Ilam, Lorestan, Kermanshah, Kurdistan, and Azerbaijan, and 16 near Van, Sirnak, and Hakkari in Turkiye.

No seismic activity was recorded in western or southwestern Iraq. The authority attributed the pattern to the Arabian Plate’s movement toward the continental collision zone, which increases activity across northern and northeastern Iraq.

Seismologist Ali Ramthan linked Kirkuk’s recent activity to reverse faults in the Kirkuk Embayment on the western edge of the Zagros fold-and-thrust belt, where the convergence of the Arabian and Eurasian plates releases accumulated tectonic stress.

Read more: Kirkuk earthquake swarm tied to active fault zone