Earthquakes rattled Greece’s volcanic island of Santorini every few minutes overnight and into Wednesday as authorities bolstered emergency plans in case the hundreds of temblors over the past few days are a harbinger of a larger quake to come.

Crescent-shaped Santorini is a premier tourism destination with daily arrivals via commercial flights, ferries, and cruise ships. The island draws more than three million visitors annually to its whitewashed villages, built along dramatic cliffs formed by a massive volcanic eruption more than 3,500 years ago.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis appealed for calm as 200 earthquakes have left the residents of Santorini island, and its neighbours in the Aegean Sea, rattled, Al Jazeera reported on Tuesday.

The Greek island of Santorini was struck by the latest in a string of earthquakes Tuesday, this time a 4.8 temblor. The government said it will backstop the island destination's tourist industry.

February marks the unofficial start of the tourist season in the Greek island of Santorini - when the first cruise ships are due to arrive and the Easter holidays approach. But with thousands of earthquakes shaking the island since January and experts unable to say when they will end,

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’