The number of damage reports following last week’s earthquake in Groningen province has risen to 2,117, monitoring body IMG has said.

Of those, 1,486 come from within the quake zone. The earthquake was centred on the village of Zeerijp.

Almost 60 reports involved people who felt acutely unsafe because of the impact of the quake, which at 3.4 on the Richter scale was one of the most severe ever measured in the province. Emergency action has so far been taken at seven properties, the IMG said.

The Netherlands closed down the main Groningen gas fields in 2023 because of the quakes, which have damaged thousands of homes and created great uncertainty for locals over the years.

More than 1,600 earthquakes have hit the region since the 1980s, damaging 85,000 buildings.

A parliamentary commission said in 2023 that the interests of the people of Groningen were systematically ignored by both the government and oil companies, and that making money remained the dominant concern when natural gas extraction started causing earthquakes.