An earthquake of magnitude 4.5 has shaken this Friday the Turkish province of Kutahya, located in the Aegean Sea about 350 kilometers south of Istanbul, without causing injuries or material damage but fear among the inhabitants of the area.

The tremor was recorded around 07.29 (05.29 GMT) and was followed shortly after by another of magnitude 3.9.

“Fortunately, there are no human or material losses. We have not received any negative report. Our investigations are ongoing. We will be able to offer more accurate information after new inspections,” the governor of Kutahya, Musa Isin, said in a message.

According to experts, this tremor is not related to the magnitude 6.2 that was recorded last Wednesday near Istanbul, and which caused more than 230 injuries, most of them mild, due to panic reactions.

After that tremor, the aftershocks also continued, as usual after a strong earthquake, with three of magnitude 4.

Turkish media report that many people left the Turkish metropolis for fear of an even greater tremor and that about 100,000 people went to spend the night in spaces enabled by the authorities in mosques, schools or warehouses, or even outdoors.

With 16 million inhabitants, Istanbul is the largest city in Europe and its location, just twenty kilometers from one of the main geological faults in Anatolia, has worried experts for decades, who predict as inevitable a tremor of great magnitude “soon”, although without being able to predict when.

About 150,000 people have passed before Pope Francis’ coffin in the Vatican basilica to say goodbye, in the last three days and until noon this Friday, the eve of his funeral.

The spokesman for the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, confirmed the figure until 12.00 local hours (10.00 GMT).

The passage of the faithful has remained constant in the last few hours, after last night the basilica remained open until 2.30 am (0.30 GMT) and reopened at 5.40 (3.40 GMT).

The Holy See had to change the initial plans of closing the tempo at night so that the thousands of faithful who arrived from all over the world could say goodbye to the pontiff.

The burning chapel of Francis will remain open until 7:00 p.m. local time (17.00 GMT) this afternoon, and then proceed to the ceremony of closing the coffin before its solemn funeral, on Saturday morning.

The Italian Civil Protection has launched an alert on all mobile phones in Rome to warn that the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square will be closed this afternoon to prepare for the funeral.

The warning, also audible, appeared on mobile phones through the IT-alert system, used in emergencies.

“Civil Protection Department – Farewell to Pope Francis. Closing time of St. Peter’s Square from 5:00 p.m. (3:00 p.m.) on April 25. For tours and schedules of the funeral www.protezionecivile.it«, read the message.

The notice could be read on the telephone screens in Italian, English, French and Spanish due to the high number of tourists and faithful who are in the Italian capital and, above all, in the vicinity of the Vatican.

The Italian authorities estimate that around 200,000 faithful will attend the funeral by the pontiff on Saturday, after which the coffin will be transferred in a funeral procession to the basilica of Santa María la Mayor, where Francis expressed his desire to be buried.

A total of 149 cardinals have already arrived in Rome of the total of 252 that make up the cardinal college, although only 133 will enter the conclave to choose a successor for being under 80 years old, a mandatory rule.

The cardinals who will participate in the funeral tomorrow will visit the tomb of the Argentine pope on Sunday.

The funerals also mark the beginning of the ‘Novendial’, the period of nine days of mourning in the Vatican for the death of the pontiff.

As for the conclave, Vatican legislation establishes that it must begin within a maximum period of 20 days after the death of the pope, which occurred on April 21.

That is why the cardinals are expected to be locked up in the Sistine Chapel between May 5, when mourning ends, and the 10th, when the period of 20 days without a pope is fulfilled.

The Sistine Chapel has announced its closure from April 28 to prepare for the conclave.

The complexity of the transfer of Pope Francis’ coffin through the center of Rome, from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried, is the main concern for the Italian authorities, the head of Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, acknowledged on Thursday.

That part of the device, which will take place on Saturday after the funeral, presents important logistical, infrastructure and security challenges, the official admitted at a press conference, in which he also said that the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel before, about 61,000, will increase in the coming hours.

On Saturday, after the funeral, his body will be taken in a vehicle in a solemn passage to the Roman basilica of Santa María La Mayor, to be buried in a chapel, as the Argentine pontiff arranged in life, which will collapse the center of the Italian capital.

“I remember that the burial ceremony will be a private ceremony, while immediately after the faithful will be given the opportunity to reach the side of their holiness, and obviously the sustained concentration of faithful must be taken into great consideration,” said Ciciliano.

The route of this funeral procession, which will extend over six kilometers, will be analyzed today in a meeting by those responsible for the organization, who are carrying out a “complete evaluation”.

Ciciliano focused on the exceptional fact that Francisco’s death has coincided with the Jubilee year, and that this is also a time when Rome is usually full of tourists, so it is difficult to estimate the number of people who will attend to follow the funeral.

Despite warning that parallels cannot be established with the death of John Paul II in 2005, Ciciliano reiterated that “we are estimating around 200,000 people, although we do not know if they will be deployed in St. Peter’s Square or along the funeral procession” to Santa María la Mayor.

Meanwhile, the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel of Pope Francis, which until 1:00 p.m. this Thursday already amounted to 61,000, will rise significantly in the next few hours, until Friday it closes at 19.00 (17.00 GMT) for the ceremony of closing the coffin before the funeral on Saturday, he anticipated.

The person in charge drew attention to the significant drop in temperatures at night, so he called on the faithful to dress like “an onion” to be able to add or remove layers as needed.

Regarding the arrival of new faithful in Rome, he said that there are 260,000 seats available to travel by train, and that on the day of the funeral about 500 buses to the Italian capital are expected to arrive.

“There will be state, commercial and private flights that will arrive at Fiumicino and Ciampino airports. We have also maintained Pratica di Mare as an airfield,” he added.

He also referred to the reception of the hundreds of world leaders and authorities who will be in Rome to attend the funeral, including the president of the United States or the kings of Spain, which he considered “very complex.”

The preparations “are being developed in close collaboration with the Prefecture of Rome for those aspects related to security, since there are elements that overlap,” he said.

This difficulty grows due to the fact that after the funerals most of these leaders will return immediately, but others prefer to stay in the city.

After the funeral, the second phase of the Civil Protection deployment will be activated, which includes the conclave to elect the new pope, when the forecasts point to an even greater number of faithful, which will also coincide with other massive events such as the final of the Soccer Cup on May 14.