Neum

The epicenter of the earthquake, which was registered at 5:07 a.m., was in the area of Metkovi, 5 kilometers southwest of Neum, at a depth of 6 kilometers, the EMSC announced.
Yesterday, the Seismological Service of Croatia recorded a weak earthquake of magnitude 2.6 on the Richter scale in the sea off the coast of Peljeac, southeast of uljan.

The Peljesac Bridge, linking Croatia's Peljesac peninsula with the rest of the country, was fully joined together on Wednesday night, with the installation of the last, 165th segment of its steel span.

Bosniak politicians in Bosnia have savaged Croatia for starting work on a controversial bridge in Dalmatia, calling the beginning of its construction on Monday an assault on Bosnia's sovereignty and territorial integrity and an act contrary to international law. 

Bosnian officials reacted angrily to Croatia's signing of a contract on Monday to build the Peljesac Bridge on the Adriatic Sea coast in Dubrovnik, arguing that Zagreb must resolve its outstanding sea border issues with Sarajevo first.

The decision was made by a state commission in charge of controlling public procurement procedures.

The commission rejected the appeals of Austria's Strabag and of the Italian-Turkish consortium Astaldi-Ictas , after more than two months spent analyzing the complaints, Zagreb-based daily Vecernji List said.

Austrian construction company Strabag AG filed a complaint on Monday about the bid made by the Chinese Road and Bridge Corporation to build the Peljesac Bridge in southern Croatia.

Croatia's state roads company, Croatian Roads, announced on Friday that the China Road and Bridge Corporation is to build the Peljesac Bridge, the biggest infrastructural project in the country.

The offer from the Chinese state-owned construction company was cheaper than that of Austria's Strabag - 279 million euros in comparison to 351 million euros.

In an interview for the Croatian weekly Globus on Wednesday, an MP from the governing Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Miroslav Tudjman, blamed Bosnia's former President, Alija Izetbegovic, for encouraging the birth of Islamic terrorism in the 1990s.

Gabrijela Zalac, Croatia's minister for regional development, said on Sunday evening that construction of the Peljesac Bridge, which will connect two pieces of Croatian territory that are currently divided by a 14-kilometre stretch of Bosnian coast, will not be stopped.

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have traded threats over the construction of the Peljesac Bridge that is designed to connect the Croatian mainland with its southernmost region, cutting across the narrow exit from Bosnia's only coastal town of Neum to the open sea.