An offshore magnitude 7.8 earthquake has rocked the southern Philippines, killing at least 32 people, injuring more than 200 others and sending a 3ft tsunami into nearby coasts, officials said.
A few buildings collapsed and key infrastructure sustained quake damage in the city of General Santos, and tsunami damage was reported in at least one coastal village.
Smaller waves were measured in Indonesia and Palau and as far away as southern Japan.
The quake also triggered a landslide in the province of Sarangani in the southern Philippines that killed 13 villagers.
Rene Punzalan, a disaster mitigation official for the province, told the DZBB radio network that the landslide hit houses in the mountainous town of Glan. Four other villagers died in Sarangani for still-unclear reasons, he said.
“It’s a major earthquake,” said Teresito Bacolcol, the director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, warning people to seek advice before returning to damaged buildings and houses which could collapse due to aftershocks.
“Our pick-up truck suddenly jerked and I thought we had a flat tyre,” Rod Sosmena, regional director of the Office of Civil Defence, told the Associated Press from the hard-hit port city of General Santos, where he was travelling when the quake struck.
“The shaking was very strong and people dashed out of houses into the streets.”
Another regional disaster response official, Ednar Dayanghirang, told the AP that he was able to “hardly stand and keep my balance when the ground shook as I was leaving my house” in the southern port city of Davao.
General Santos is a port city of more than 700,000 people that is a regional hub for the tuna export industry and other commerce.
The quake, the strongest to strike the country this year, was centred at sea off Mindanao, the second most populous island in the Philippine archipelago.
According to Mr Bacolcol, the quake occurred at a depth of 20 miles, about 20 miles south-west of the town of Maasim in Sarangani.
https://x.com/NWS_NTWC/status/2063780387042762955?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ordered the cancellation of classes and directed disaster response agencies to immediately get to work in quake-hit provinces, saying “the national government is moving and we will not leave Mindanao behind”.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said the threat of a tsunami largely passed about five hours after the quake. Philippine officials also lifted a tsunami warning by mid-afternoon.
The international airport in General Santos was temporarily shut, and 17 domestic flights were cancelled, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said.
The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of seismic faults around the ocean. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and tropical storms each year.
