The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday extended condolences to the Philippine government and offered to provide assistance following a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck the central Philippines on Tuesday night, killing at least 69 people.
The ministry said in a statement that it had not received any reports of Taiwanese being injured, killed or trapped after the quake hit off Cebu province’s Bogo City.
The ministry is closely monitoring rescue and relief efforts, and has informed Manila that Taipei is ready to provide humanitarian assistance if needed, it said.
Photo: AFP
It also urged Taiwanese in the Philippines to contact the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Manila in case of emergencies by calling its round-the-clock emergency hotline at 63-917-819-4597 or 0917-819-4597.
The Tourism Administration said that no Taiwanese tour groups had reported being affected by the quake in Cebu, a popular tourist destination in the Southeast Asian country.
The earthquake struck just before 10pm on Tuesday.
Rescue workers were using backhoes and sniffer dogs to look for survivors in collapsed houses and other damaged buildings yesterday.
The death toll was expected to rise, with an unspecified number of people trapped in buildings in Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu.
Sporadic rain, and damaged bridges and roads have hampered the race to save lives, officials said.
“We’re still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” Philippine Office of Civil Defense Deputy Administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said in a statement. “There are still many reports of people who were pinned or hit by debris.”
The epicenter of the earthquake, which was 5km deep, was about 19km northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people.
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