The 1995 Gulf of Aqaba earthquake (also known as Nuweiba earthquake) occurred on November 22 at 06:15 local time (04:15 UTC) and registered 7.3 on the scale. The epicenter was located in the central segment of the Gulf of Aqaba, the narrow body of water that separates Egypt's Sinai Peninsula from the western border of Saudi Arabia. At least 8 people were killed and 30 were injured in the meizoseismal area. The earthquake occurred along the Dead Sea Transform (DST) fault system, an active tectonic plate boundary with seismicity that is characterized by long-running quiescent periods with occasional large and damaging earthquakes, along with intermittent earthquake swarms. It was the strongest tectonic event in the area for many decades and caused injuries, damage, and deaths throughout the Levant and is also thought to have remotely triggered a series of small to moderate earthquakes to the north of the epicenter. In the aftermath of the quake, several field investigations set out to determine the extent of any surface faulting, and the distribution of aftershocks was analyzed. Tectonic setting The Gulf of Aqaba is situated along the southern portion of the Dead Sea Transform (DST) fault zone, a transform fault that forms the barrier between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate (Arabian-Nubian Shield). The left-lateral strike-slip fault connects the spreading center that forms the Red Sea in the south with the East Anatolian Fault in Turkey in the north. Although there is much that is not known about the DST, it is accepted that its transform motion began around 12–18 million years ago. Geologist A. M. Quennell, who is credited with first recognizing the movement along the fault in 1958, estimated the total displacement to be while a similar study that included more regional influences resulted in an estimated slip of . That broader kinematic model translates into a slip rate of 8–10 mm/year for the portion of the fault south of the Dead Sea. Along the length of the Dead Sea Transform (also known as the Levantine fault) there are several pull-apart basins that have resulted in the formation of the Dead Sea as well as the Gulf of Aqaba. The gulf comprises three distinct pull-apart basins that were formed by individual segments of the fault and are known as (from north to south) the Elat Deep, Aragonese Deep, and the Dakar Deep. At wide, the gulf is relatively narrow,