FROM PAGE 12

The Philippine seismology agency said there were more than 200 aftershocks, at least nine of those strong and felt across Mindanao, the highest at a magnitude 6.7.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ordered an immediate disaster response in Mindanao, an island the size of South Korea, with agencies directed to prepare relief supplies and evacuation centres and be ready for possible rescue operations.

“The national government is moving and we will not leave Mindanao behind,” Marcos said in a statement.

The Philippines and Indonesia experience hundreds of quakes each year and sit on tectonically complex parts of the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a seismically active belt stretching from South America to the Russian Far East.

Damage to buildings, utilities and infrastructure was still being assessed, but the worst affected area was General Santos, a city of about 700,000 people, where shops and buildings were damaged, some with broken signs and glass, others reduced to piles of concrete and rubble.

Video shared by the local government showed the collapse of a building housing a fastfood restaurant, with panicked onlookers fleeing as a cloud of dust spread quickly through the air.

One General Santos hospital was evacuated due to concerns about cracks on higher floors. One of the buildings at the city’s Notre Dame of Dadiangas University collapsed, but no one was inside.

“I had to duck and shelter myself under the table. And it was very long and strong,” the university’s president Manuel de Leon told broadcaster DZMM.

The quake struck just as schools were returning from a long break.