A strong earthquake jolted the central Philippines on Tuesday night, collapsing buildings and killing at least 20 people and injuring more than three dozen others, a government spokeswoman said.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology reported that the magnitude 6.9 earthquake shook the province of Cebu, home to 3.2 million people, just before 10 p.m. local time. It was followed by a series of smaller aftershocks.
Ainjeliz de la Torre-Orong, a spokeswoman for Cebu, said in an email that at least 20 people had been confirmed dead and at least 37 had been injured. Four buildings had collapsed, three government buildings had been damaged and six bridges and one road were not passable, she said.
Ms. de la Torre-Orong said that Cebu’s governor, Pam Baricuatro, had ordered the immediate delivery of relief supplies, including water and medicine, to those who had been affected and had dispatched equipment to clear roads and help in rescue operations.
Officials in the province of South Cotabato also planned to dispatch relief supplies and a medical team to Cebu, she said.
Five of the dead were in the town of San Remigio, Capt. Jan Ace Elcid Layug, the officer in charge of the San Remigio police, said, according to ABS-CBN, a Filipino news outlet.
Four of the victims had been playing basketball in a sports complex that collapsed, he said. One of them was a member of the Bureau of Fire Protection and the three others were members of the Philippine Coast Guard, he said, according to ABS-CBN. The fifth victim in San Remigio was a child who was trapped in rubble in another location, he said.
Officials in San Remigio said on Facebook that they planned to declare a “state of calamity” because of the “widespread damage and disruption to the lives of our constituents.” The declaration, officials said, would help them mobilize resources for those affected by the earthquake.
The authorities announced that schools and government buildings in Cebu would be closed on Wednesday to allow for damage inspections.
The Archdiocese of Cebu said that churches had been “gravely affected” and should not be used to celebrate Masses until they had been inspected. Several appeared to have been badly damaged. Photos posted on the Facebook page of the Archdiocesan Shrine of Santa Rosa de Lima in Cebu showed that parts of the stone structure had collapsed into rubble.
Local news reports also showed photos of damaged fast-food restaurants and apartment buildings.
The authorities had warned of a “minor sea-level disturbance” after the earthquake and urged people to stay away from the shore, but later canceled the warning after the danger appeared to pass.
Earthquakes are common in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands that straddles the “Ring of Fire,” a region in the Pacific where tectonic plates grind together. In November 2023, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake shook the southern Philippines, killing at least seven people and injuring hundreds.
In July 2023, a magnitude 7 quake killed at least four people in the northern Philippines. Several deadly earthquakes hit the southern Philippines in 2019, the strongest of which was a magnitude 6.9 quake that killed at least two people.
Aie Balagtas See contributed reporting.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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