Four die, power cut as strong quake hits

A powerful earthquake in the southern Philippines yesterday killed at least four people, injured more than 120 others, damaged buildings and an airport and knocked out power.

The quake, with a magnitude of 6.5, roused residents from sleep in Surigao del Norte province, with hundreds fleeing their homes. The quake was centred about 14 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital of Surigao at a relatively shallow depth of 11km, said Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology.

Nearly 100 aftershocks had been felt, officials said, adding that schools were being reopened as evacuation centres for residents wary of returning to their damaged homes.

Solidum said the quake was set off by movement in the Philippine fault, which sits in the Pacific ‘‘Ring of Fire’’.

At least four people were killed, some after being hit by falling debris and blunt objects, provincial disaster response official Gilbert Gonzales said, correcting an earlier report by a regional hospital which reported 15 residents who were rushed in with injuries as dead.

At least 126 others were injured in Surigao city, about 700km southeast of the capital, Manila.

‘‘We’re still doing a rapid needs and damage assessment,’’ Office of Civil Defence director Antonio Gonzales said.

Several mostly low-slung buildings and schools in the coastal city were damaged, and a bridge collapsed in an outlying town. Rescue teams were checking for possible casualties in a village called Poknoy in the city of 140,500 people, he said.

The city’s airport was temporarily closed due to cracks in the runway, aviation officials said. A major port in Lipata district was also closed while engineers checked the stability of an access road, Gonzales said.

‘‘The shaking was so strong I could hardly stand,’’ coast guard member Rayner Neil Elopre said.

The last major earthquake that struck Surigao, an impoverished region also dealing with a communist insurgency, was in the 1800s, Solidum said. A magnitude 7.7 quake killed nearly 2000 people on the northern island of Luzon in 1990.