Magnitude 7.6 quake hits southern Philippines

MANILA: A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the southern Philippines on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, as local authorities warned of a “destructive tsunami” and urged people in coastal areas to flee.

The quake struck at a depth of 32 kilometres (20 miles) at about 10:37 pm local time (1437 GMT) about 21 kilometres northeast of Hinatuan municipality in Surigao del Sur province on Mindanao island, the USGS said.

“Destructive tsunami is expected with life threatening wave heights,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on X, formerly Twitter.

It said waves of more than one metre above the normal tides were expected to hit the coast and advised people in Surigao del Sur and Davao Oriental provinces to “immediately evacuate” to higher ground or further inland.

Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic as well as volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Most are too weak to be felt by humans but strong and destructive quakes come at random with no technology available to predict when and where they will happen.