The heavily damaged area in a narrow belt in Kobe was a very characteristic feature of the 1995 Hyogoken-nambu (Kobe) earthquake. The processes responsible for the amplification of the strong ground motion there have not yet been clarified. We model the basin edge effect derived from rupture directivity by simulating dynamic rupture for an event with M=7 on a strike-slip fault buried near a basin. Ground velocity seismograms up to 1 Hz are computed using a 3-D finite difference method. Patterns of the peak ground velocities show that they are amplified in a very narrow belt along the basin edge, a few kilometers in width, when the fault runs parallel to the edge. This amplification effect also strongly depends on the fault location. However, the large amplitudes are not concentrated in a narrow belt when the whole fault ruptures at once. This suggests that an intense ground shaking in a narrow belt along a basin edge occurs only when rupture propagates parallel to the basin edge with a finite velocity. This appears to have been the case in the Kobe area in which the basin edge effect derived from rupture directivity may have been the cause of the heavily damaged belt.¿ 1997 American Geophysical Union