Politics
Philippines quake death toll climbs over 60; injured overwhelm hospitals
- More than 150 injured in quake, say officials.
- No tsunami threat, multiple aftershocks recorded.
- President Marcos Jr expresses condolences.
The death toll from a powerful earthquake in the central Philippines has climbed to over 60 on Wednesday, with injured patients overwhelming hospitals on the island of Cebu as workers carried dozens of body bags away in the chaotic aftermath.
The shallow magnitude 6.9 quake struck at 9:59pm (1359 GMT) Tuesday off the island’s northern end near Bogo, a city of 90,000 people, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).
Injured children cried and adults screamed while receiving treatment on beds laid out beneath blue tents on the driveway of the Cebu Provincial Hospital in Bogo.
They had been wheeled out of the building amid fears of further harm as hundreds of aftershocks rocked the region overnight.
Nearby, hospital workers carried black body bags on stretchers into vans that will take them to local mortuaries, AFP journalists saw.
Up to 60 people are reported killed so far, Office of Civil Defence deputy administrator Rafaelito Alejandro said.
“We are receiving additional numbers of reported casualties so this thing is very fluid,” he told reporters in Manila.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council earlier listed 147 injured across the central islands, where 22 buildings were damaged.
Rescuer Teddy Fontillas, 56, told AFP he had not slept a wink, adding some patients had to be moved to other hospitals because the one in Bogo was already overflowing.
“We are already overwhelmed, so we have to bring them to the city,” he said, referring to the provincial capital Cebu, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) to the south.
“I’m already struggling, but what we are doing is necessary to help our patients,” he added.
“Because of the high volume of patients with serious injuries, the medical staff tended to some of them outside the hospital,” Cebu provincial governor Pamela Baricuatro posted on her official Facebook page.
Dramatic footage filmed by residents and widely shared on social media showed an old Catholic church on Bantayan island near Cebu adorned with a string of light bulbs swaying wildly shortly before its belfry tumbled into the courtyard.
“I heard a loud booming noise from the direction of the church then I saw rocks falling from the structure. Luckily, no one got hurt,” Martham Pacilan, 25, who was nearby when the belfry collapsed, told AFP.
Local television showed riders being forced to dismount from their motorcycles and hold onto the railings for dear life as a Cebu bridge violently rocked.
‘The mall started shaking’
Buildings were damaged as far as Cebu city, where online shoe merchant Jayford Maranga, 21, hid under a restaurant table to avoid being struck by the collapsing metal ceiling of a shopping mall.
“My friend and I ate at the food court near closing time, and then, bang! It was as if the Earth stopped spinning. And then the mall started shaking,” Maranga told AFP, adding his friend was slightly injured.
The Cebu provincial government has put out a call on its official Facebook page for medical volunteers to assist in the aftermath of the quake.
“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” provincial rescue official Wilson Ramos told AFP.
Overnight recovery efforts were hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he added.
The rescue effort proceeded all night, even as the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the region was being rocked by 379 aftershocks.
The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, though power was restored shortly after midnight in Cebu and four other major central islands, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines said in an updated advisory.
The Cebu provincial government reported a commercial building and a school in Bantayan had collapsed, while a fast food restaurant in Bogo was heavily damaged.
Agnes Merza, 65, a carer based in Bantayan, said her kitchen tiles had cracked.
“It felt as though we would all fall down. It’s the first time I have experienced it. The neighbours all ran out of their homes. My two teenage assistants hid under a table because that´s what they were taught in the Boy Scouts,” she told AFP.
A number of village roads also sustained damage. In Tabogon town, the road was riddled with five-centimetre (two-inch) cracks, AFP journalists saw.
The USGS had reported a magnitude reading of 7.0 before revising it down, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was no tsunami threat from the earthquake.
Quakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Most are too weak to be felt by humans, but strong and destructive ones come at random, with no technology available to predict when and where they might strike.
- Authorities urge residents to stay away from coastal areas.
- Tsunami waves of up to 3 metres (9.84 ft) expected.
- Biggest waves expected in Iwate, Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 struck off the northeastern coast of Japan on Monday, as authorities urged residents to stay away from coastal areas where tsunami waves of up to 3 metres (9.84 ft) were expected.
The tremor had an epicentre in the Pacific Ocean and was 10km deep, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The biggest waves were expected in Iwate, Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures, authorities said.
Speaking to reporters, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the government had set up an emergency task force and urged citizens in the affected areas to evacuate to safety.
Broadcaster NHK showed ships sailing out of Hachinohe port in Hokkaido in anticipation of the waves, as an alert ‘Tsunami! Evacuate!’ flashed across the screen.
Bullet train services in Aomori at the northern tip of Japan’s main Honshu island were halted due to the tremors, Kyodo news agency reported.
The quake measured an ‘upper 5’ on Japan’s seismic intensity scale — strong enough to make it difficult for people to move around. In many cases, unreinforced concrete-block walls collapse.
Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes. Located in the “Ring of Fire” of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or more.
There are no nuclear power plants currently in operation in Hokkaido and Tohoku regions, but Hokkaido Electric Power and Tohoku Electric Power have a number of shutdown nuclear power plants there. Tohoku Electric said it was checking the impact of the earthquake and tsunami on its Onagawa nuclear power plant.
US forces killed three men whom the military described as illicit drug smugglers in a strike on a boat in the Caribbean, US Southern Command said on Sunday.
Southern Command posted what it said was a video of the strike on the social media platform X, showing an explosion of a small boat travelling on open water.
The boat was travelling on “known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean,” Southern Command said.
The US military has so far killed 157 alleged members or affiliates of drug organisations in 45 strikes against drug trafficking vessels in the Western Hemisphere, a senior US defence official said last month.
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as leader of the United Nations, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis.
Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rican Rebeca Grynspan, and Senegal’s Macky Sall will each face grillings by 193 member states and NGOs for three hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It is only the second time the UN has held a public Q&A, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency.
Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the global organisation as its secretary-general.
US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the Manhattan-based UN, Mike Waltz, has warned the next chief must align with “American values and interests” and that Washington would back the best candidate — not necessarily a Latin American woman, as some countries are demanding.
All four candidates to take over the embattled UN when Guterres departs on December 31, 2026 pledge to grow trust in the bitterly divided organisation that faces financial Armageddon because of Washington’s refusal to pay its bills.
Here is a look at the contenders:
Michelle Bachelet
A Chilean socialist brutally tortured by the regime of Augusto Pinochet, Bachelet became her country’s first woman president in 2006.
She went on to be the UN rights chief, a sensitive role in which she alienated some countries, especially China, which mauled her for reporting on alleged abuses of the Uyghur people.
Bachelet, 74, has said that she is “convinced” she has the experience “to confront a moment” marked by unprecedented crises and conflicts.
She is backed by Mexico and Brazil — but Chile withdrew its backing after far-right President Jose Antonio Kast took office.
Rafael Grossi
The 65-year-old Grossi, a career diplomat, has led the International Atomic Energy Agency since 2019, propelling him into the middle of the battle over Iran’s nuclear programme as well as the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
His handling of the two situations has drawn close scrutiny from the United States and Russia, which both have veto power on the Security Council.
Grossi has called for the UN to “return to its founding promise — to save humanity from the scourge of war.”
Rebeca Grynspan
Less well-known than her opponents, Grynspan — Costa Rica’s former vice president — leads the UN trade and development body UNCTAD, pulling off a diplomatic feat by brokering the Black Sea Grain Initiative between Moscow and Kyiv to allow grain exports following Russia’s invasion.
In her pitch to world leaders, the 70-year-old plays up her personal story as the daughter of Jewish parents.
She said they “barely survived” the Holocaust before emigrating to Costa Rica, stressing her attachment to the UN Charter, calling the document signed as World War II came to an end a “standing warning against the perils of dehumanisation, distrust and fragmentation.”
Macky Sall
Macky Sall, 64, is the only candidate who does not come from Latin America, from where the next UN boss should come, according to convention.
The former Senegalese president has stressed the link between peace and development in his pitch to lead the UN.
He said peace can never be “sustainable” if development is undermined “by poverty, inequality, exclusion and climate vulnerability.”
Proposed by Burundi, the current chair of the African Union, Sall is supported neither by the regional African bloc — 20 of its 55 members oppose him — nor by his own country.
Senegalese authorities accuse him of bloodily repressing violent political demonstrations that left dozens dead between 2021 and 2024.
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