More than 15 people have died and more than 400 are injured after a 6.7-magnitude Ecuador earthquake struck the southern coast.
Authorities reported that El Oro province in the south was the hardest affected, with 12 fatalities reported there.
The earthquake was felt in northern Peru, where a 14-year-old girl was killed when her home fell in the border district of Tumbes.
Machala and Cuenca in Ecuador were two of the cities where buildings and automobiles were damaged while rescue personnel hurried to assist victims.
The epicentre was close to Balao, which is about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second-largest city with a population of about three million.
Guillermo Lasso, president of Ecuador, asked citizens to keep “cool and to be informed through proper channels” on building damage in a tweet.
The risk management office in Quito reports that a house’s facade crumbled in Cuenca, crushing a car and leaving “a deceased person” behind. Many residences in the historic centre of the city were damaged, according to AFP journalists there.
Three people were reported deceased nearby in the province of El Oro after a tower collapsed and severely crushed them.
In an interview with FM Mundo radio, Mario Ruiz, director of the Ecuadorian Geophysical Institute, said, “That is a relatively significant magnitude given what we have in the country.
The magnitude was initially listed as 7.0 by Peruvian seismological authorities but was later revised to 6.7. (Source BBC)
