Davao, Philippines — A powerful earthquake shook the southern Philippines on Tuesday, killing at least two people, injuring dozens and sending people dashing out of homes and buildings in a region still recovering from recent strong temblors.
The 6.6 magnitude quake was caused by movement in a local fault about 4.3 miles deep about 15 miles northeast of Tulunan town in Cotabato province, the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology said. The U.S. Geological Survey had the same measurement, adjusted from a preliminary 6.8.
The Office of Civil Defense reported a 66-year-old man died from head injuries, apparently after being hit by a falling object in South Cotabato province’s capital city of Koronadal, where 30 other people were injured as they dashed out of homes, offices and shopping malls as the ground shook.
More than a dozen people were hurt in M’lang town in Cotabato and Cagayan de Oro province, according to OCD.
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Davao city, the hometown of President Rodrigo Duterte, also shook from the quake, the Reuters news agency reports.
“Inspection is ongoing and the disaster risk office is checking our roads and bridges,” Mayor Sara Duterte, his daughter, told the ANC news channel, according to Reuters.
Rodrigo Duterte was Davao city mayor for many years, Reuters says.
Several cities and towns suspended classes to allow inspections of school buildings. At least three government and privately owned buildings damaged in another quake earlier this month sustained further damage and remained off limits to the public.
A 6.3-magnitude quake Oct. 16 killed five people and damaged schools, hospitals, malls and other commercial buildings.
In July, two earthquakes hours apart struck a group of sparsely populated islands in the Luzon Strait in the northern Philippines, killing eight people.
The Philippines lies in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.
A magnitude 7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people in the northern Philippines in 1990.
