At least 14 people were killed and several wounded in a powerful earthquake that shook Peru and Ecuador on Saturday, authorities said.
Destroyed buildings, crushed vehicles and debris could be seen in cities such as Machala and Cuenca in Ecuador, as rescue officials rushed to lend aid and panicked residents ran into the streets.
The quake, which the US Geological Survey put at a magnitude 6.8 and a depth of nearly 66km, struck at 12:12pm.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Its epicenter was in the Ecuadoran municipality of Balao, near the border with Peru, authorities said.
“I went out into the street because I saw people starting to run in panic, getting out of their cars,” said Magaly Escandon, a sewing supplies saleswoman in Cuenca.
Ecuador’s presidency reported 13 dead — 11 in El Oro Province and two in Azuay Province.
In the Peruvian city of Tumbes on the border with Ecuador, a four-year-old girl died after a brick hit her on the head, an official report said.
“There where the pool of blood is, I was playing with my ... niece and a brick fell on her,” her uncle David Alvarado said.
The tremor was also strongly felt in other cities, including Guayaquil, Quito, Manabi and Manta, social media reports said.
Ecuador’s presidency reported that “there are injured people who are being treated promptly in hospitals,” but did not provide any figures.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso traveled to El Oro, where he visited the wounded in a hospital, and was next planning to go to Azuay.
“I have just finished visiting the city of Machala... I have ratified government support, the availability of resources,” he said in a video on Twitter.
Earlier in the day he urged people to remain “calm and to be informed through official channels” about damage to buildings.
Quito’s Risk Management Office said that the facade of a house collapsed on a vehicle and left “a deceased person” in Cuenca.
Journalists in the city also reported that old houses in the historic center had been damaged. Roads near Cuenca were also blocked by landslides.
Nearby, in El Oro, three people were reported dead when a tower fell over and crushed them.
The earthquake shook the north and central coasts of Peru with less intensity.
In Tumbes, it damaged 12 homes, an official report said.
“It is a relatively high magnitude for what we have in the country,” Ecuadorian Geophysical Institute director Mario Ruiz said in an interview with FM Mundo radio.
BACKING THE APPLICATION: Ankara’s move is expected to enable Helsinki to join the alliance, while the Turkish president is still opposed to backing Sweden’s application Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday ended months of diplomatically charged delays and asked the Turkish parliament to back Finland’s bid to join NATO. A simultaneous decision by fellow holdout Hungary to schedule a Finnish ratification vote for March 27 means the US-led defense alliance would likely grow to 31 nations within a few months. NATO’s expansion into a country with a 1,340km border with Russia would double the length of the bloc’s frontier with its Cold War-era foe. Finland had initially aimed to join together with fellow NATO aspirant Sweden, which is facing a litany of disputes with Turkey that
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more
Former US president Donald Trump said he expects to be “arrested” tomorrow over an alleged hush-money payment to a porn star in 2016 and urged his supporters to protest as prosecutors gave signs of moving closer to an indictment. If indicted, he would be the first former US president to be charged with a crime, marking an explosive and unpredictable development in next year’s White House race as Trump seeks again to clinch the Republican nomination. “Leading Republican candidate & former President of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week,” the 76-year-old said on Saturday on