Paris

Last month's earthquake in Algeria has prompted European researchers to mount a rare full-scale expedition to a region where political conflict over the past decade has sharply curtailed their fieldwork.

The earthquake, which struck the coast on 21 May, killing more than 2,000 people, prompted a French team of 30 Earth scientists to travel to Algeria to collaborate with colleagues at the Centre for Research in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Geophysics in Algiers. At 6.7 on the Richter scale, the earthquake was the worst in the region for more than 20 years.

The North African country lies on the southern side of the fault line at which the Eurasian and African tectonic plates meet, making it interesting to seismologists.

The researchers hope to obtain valuable data about that side of the fault, which has been neglected for more than a decade, says Alain Mauffret, a marine seismologist at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. Because of the conflict in Algeria, many Earth scientists have emigrated from the country, and research by outsiders has been difficult. “We can't send people there to have their throats cut,” he says.

Mauffret, who helped to coordinate the mission for France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), says the need to collect data on the earthquake and its aftershocks made it vital to visit Algeria. The team has installed seismological monitoring equipment, and has measured more than 1,000 aftershocks since 21 May. Underwater stations are due to be added this week.

Satellite radar images are being used to measure ground deformation, and Global Positioning System stations are being deployed to detect ground movements. A hypothesis that the earthquake was triggered by an underwater landslide will be studied by a marine geophysics research group in August, organized by the CNRS and IFREMER, France's national marine research agency.