The enormous iceberg A68a is pictured by the RAF as it breaks into pieces the size of a city

The giant iceberg A68a, which broke off Antarctica in 2017 and has recently drifted dangerously close to the island of South Georgia, is beginning to fall apart.

New images from the RAF show how fragments of what was once the largest iceberg in the world detach from the main part of the mountain.

The shape of the monster iceberg had been compared to a clenched fist with an index finger.

Satellite imagery earlier this week provided the first evidence that the fault lines above the “finger” of the floating mass were completely ruptured.

On Tuesday, two new icebergs, A68e and A68f, calved from A68a – just days after a large chunk (A68d) broke off its northernmost section.

A68e is the “finger” of the original mountain and measures 33 nautical miles long and is about 252 square miles, more than five times the size of the city of Manchester.

The original giant’s “ankle”, now known as the A68f, is more square in shape and, at 86 square miles, is much smaller, more than twice the size of Paris.

A68d is about the size of the city of Seville and covers an area of ​​54 square miles.

Scientists are monitoring the rest of the massive iceberg, which, despite the loss of mass, is still 1,000 square miles – roughly the size of all of Herefordshire – to see if it is in shallow water, causing problems for penguins and seals on the island looking for food in the surrounding water can result.

The US National Ice Center (USNIC) released a statement Tuesday confirming that the massive iceberg is falling apart and new smaller mountains are forming.

Cracks were discovered along the southern region of the A68a on Monday, but at the time they had not yet been cut by the floating ice sheet.

On Tuesday, the cracks caused new icebergs to form and drift off the A68a.

Satellite imagery taken this week shows that A68d broke off the northern tip of Mother Mountain and stayed near South Georgia Island.

Tracking the iceberg has revealed that it has been getting closer and closer to South Georgia over the past two months. Experts are increasingly concerned about the potential impact on the island’s unique biodiversity.

Due to the size of the iceberg and its thickness, it can get stuck in the waters around the island and potentially prevent seals and penguins from hunting in the waters.

A careful analysis of the thickness of the arctic giant has shown that it is getting thinner and possibly contributing to the recent fracture.

While it appears to have hiked south again in the past week, experts still fear the mountain could get stuck and wreak havoc. When it breaks up into several smaller pieces, experts now have to track every city-sized piece of ice.

The three fragments split within a few days at weak spots that had been visible on the iceberg since 2017, when it first calved from the main Antarctic peninsula.

At the time, it had an average thickness of 760 feet (232 m) and its bulkiest section was up to 935 feet (285 m) tall.

It’s now generally 32m thinner, but some sections have decreased by more than this.

The loss in thickness with area means that A68a is barely a third of its original volume and still can get stuck near South Georgia and cause serious problems.