MANILA - A powerful earthquake again hammered the southern Philippines early on Thursday (Oct 31), killing at least five people and rattling areas already reeling from two tremors in just the past two weeks.
The 6.5-magnitude quake struck at around 9am in Mindanao, an island the size of South Korea.
Pictures and videos posted on social media showed parts of a hotel and a condominium buckling and caving in, dozens of patients being wheeled out of a hospital, and rescuers digging through rubble.
A village elder died in Makilala town in hard-hit Cotabato province, when the first floor of a two-storey building he was in collapsed.
Four others died elsewhere in the town, according to a report by Cotabato Governor Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza. One of them was a seven-year-old child crushed by a cinder block, while the three others were caught in a landslide.
A government welfare officer told radio station DZMM that two more died in Arakan town, also in Cotabato, but these could not yet be confirmed.
In Kidapawan city, Cotabato, one side of a hotel- with four floors and a roof deck - was left leaning on an adjacent hospital. The hotel had been damaged in earlier quakes and did not have guests. But six staff and an engineer were inside to inspect the building. "They managed to run out," Kidapawan Mayor Joseph Evangelista told reporters.
A five-storey condominium in Davao City crashed down on its first floor, as its upper floors teetered and buckled. Rescue workers scrambled to bring out nine residents. A police spokesman said there could be more still trapped inside.
President Rodrigo Duterte was in his home city of Davao when the earthquake struck. His close aide Christopher Go sent to reporters photos of cracks on the walls of Mr Duterte's bedroom. "He's safe and doesn't have to be evacuated," said Mr Go.
But engineers would have to check his house to determine if it would be safe for Mr Duterte to move back in. The president was in Davao for a public holiday to remember the dead.
Senator Ronald de la Rosa was in Davao del Sur province when the quake struck. "I was expecting our house to explode because the ground was shaking violently," he told radio station DZBB.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the quake was set off by movement in a local fault at a depth of 6km, about 28km east of Tulunan town in Cotabato.
Mindanao had already been hammered by two previous quakes this month.
At least eight people died on Oct 29 when a 6.6-magnitude quake struck, also near Tulunan. That added to the seven who were killed on Oct 16 when another tremor with a magnitude 6.3 hit another part of Mindanao.
Hundreds of families from nearly 60 villages were in evacuation centres when Thursday's quake struck. Classes had remained suspended. Many buildings that suffered damage were emptied.
These measures likely helped to save lives, rescue officials said.
The Philippines has frequent seismic activity. The archipelago lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," the arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's earthquakes occur.
Seismologists had warned of more tremors in Mindanao's quake-hit areas.
"We expect small- to moderate-magnitude earthquakes to occur in the epicentral area which may continue for several days to weeks, some of which may be felt," Phivolcs said on Wednesday, citing "interrelated active faults" in Mindanao.
It recorded at least 874 aftershocks between the Oct 16 and Oct 29 quakes.
