Santorini - one of Greece's most visited islands - relies heavily on seasonal workers from other parts of Greece and abroad, who help the permanent population of just over 15,000 to serve tens of thousands of tourists on the island each day in peak season.

It welcomes around 3 million visitors per year, but between January 26 and February 8, the Seismology Laboratory of the University of Athens has registered a staggering 12,800 earthquakes in the Santorini-Amorgos zone, the strongest of these was last night at a magnitude of 5.3.

Thousands of residents are fleeing Santorini after hundreds of earthquakes were recorded near the Greek island in the last 48 hours. About 9,000 people have left the island since Sunday, with additional emergency flights scheduled to leave on Tuesday.

Scientists have detected several thousand earthquakes, the vast majority of them with small magnitudes, in just over two weeks near Greece’s volcanic island of Santorini, the University of Athens’

Seismologists have noted that the epicentre of the earthquakes is steadily drifting northward in the direction of Amorgos.