On Saturday, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake in southern Ecuador and northern Peru has left at least 13 people dead with others trapped under rubble.
The US Geological Survey reported an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 in the country’s coastal Guayas region. Its centre was about 50 miles (80 kilometres) south of Guayaquil, which has a metropolitan area of more than 3 million people.
The Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, in a televised address said the earthquake killed 12 people. In a tweet, he also asked people to remain calm.
The Peruvian prime minister, Alberto Otárola, said a four-year-old girl had died from head trauma she suffered in the collapse of her home in the Tumbes region, on the border with Ecuador.
Cristian Torres, head of the Risk Management Secretariat, Ecuador’s emergency response agency, said in a radio interview that 11 of the victims in the country died in the coastal state of El Oro and one in the highlands state of Azuay.
The victim in Azuay’s Andean community of Cuenca was a passenger in a vehicle crushed by rubble from a house, the agency said.
In the coastal province of El Oro, people were trapped under rubble, the agency reported. In the community of Machala, a two-storey home collapsed before people could be evacuated, a pier gave way and a building’s walls cracked, trapping an unknown number of people.
#Ecuador #earthquake pic.twitter.com/Q5bydqPPp9
— RakanSlmaan (@RakanSlmaan) March 18, 2023
#Ecuador #earthquake pic.twitter.com/qPPVxrqeEP
— RakanSlmaan (@RakanSlmaan) March 18, 2023
#Ecuador #earthquake pic.twitter.com/NGXCKcvplq
— RakanSlmaan (@RakanSlmaan) March 18, 2023