BOGOTÁ: A powerful magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday morning, killing dozens of people, flattening buildings across several cities and trapping residents under debris.

The epicentre was near San José del Palmar, a community of roughly 4,800 people in the Chocó region, some 400 kilometres west of Bogotá, according to the US Geological Survey and Colombia’s geological service. The USGS put the depth at about 107 kilometres. Colombia had initially assessed the magnitude at 6.6. No tsunami warning was issued.

Shaking was felt as far as the capital, forcing evacuations there and reaching neighbouring Ecuador and parts of Venezuela. Casualty tolls climbed sharply through the day, and Colombia declared a state of national disaster to unlock additional resources for the worst-hit areas. The director of the Colombian Geological Service described it as the country’s strongest earthquake in a decade.

Chocó Governor Nubia Carolina Córdoba-Curi said on X that the department had just been through a major quake and that authorities were worried about aftershocks, noting injuries and significant structural damage in the regional capital Quibdó despite the epicentre lying elsewhere. Rescue workers were digging through rubble in Cali, the country’s third-largest city, where patients were evacuated from a damaged hospital. The USGS estimated that more than two million people experienced very strong shaking. Sources: AP, Reuters