At least 20 people were killed after a powerful earthquake struck the Philippines on Tuesday, with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) measuring the magnitude at 7.0. The tremor hit at 13:59 GMT, with an epicenter initially placed in the northern Cebu region at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center confirmed there was no tsunami threat and said no action was required.
Three people on the outskirts of Bogo were killed when a landslide triggered by the quake hit their homes, rescue official Rexan Ygot told AFP.
Five more deaths were confirmed by local police in the nearby municipality of San Remigio.
Four bodies were pulled from a sports centre in San Remigio, while a child was crushed by debris in another area of the town, Manila-based network ABS-CBN reported from the scene.
The Cebu provincial government has put out a call on its official Facebook page for medical volunteers to assist in the aftermath of the quake.
“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” provincial rescue official Wilson Ramos told AFP, citing rescue efforts underway in San Remigio and Bogo. He said he did not know how many people were missing.
Recovery efforts were being hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he added. The USGS has recorded four quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher in the area following the first tremor.
A number of village roads also sustained damage.
The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines said in an advisory, adding it was still assessing the extent of the damage.
Cebu firefighter Joey Leeguid told AFP from San Fernando town: “We felt the shake here in our station, it was so strong. We saw our locker moving from left to right, we felt slightly dizzy for a while but we are all fine now.”
Earthquakes are common in the Philippines, which lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a zone of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin. While most tremors are too weak to be felt, strong and destructive quakes strike at random, with no technology able to predict when and where they will occur.
