At least 69 people killed in a powerful earthquake that hit the Philippines

BOGO, Philippines: Rescuers used backhoes and sniffer dogs to look for survivors in collapsed houses and other damaged buildings in the central Philippines on Wednesday, a day after an earthquake killed at least 69 people and injured more than 200 others.
The death toll was expected to rise from the 6.9 magnitude quake that hit at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday and trapped an unspecified number of residents in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu province.
Sporadic rain and damaged bridges and roads have hampered the race to save lives, officials said.
A dangerous quake
On Wednesday night, rescuers in orange and yellow hard hats used spotlights, a backhoe and bare hands to sift through the rubble of concrete slabs, broken wood and twisted iron bars for hours in a collapsed building in Bogo city. No survivor was found.
“We’re still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” Office of Civil Defense deputy administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said in a morning news briefing in Manila, the country’s capital. “There are still many reports of people who were pinned or hit by debris.”
The epicenter of the earthquake, which was set off by movement in an undersea fault line at a dangerously shallow depth of 5 kilometers (3 miles), was about 19 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu province where about half of the deaths were reported, officials said.
The Philippine government is considering whether to seek help from foreign governments based on an ongoing rapid damage assessment, Alejandro said.
The United States, Japan, Australia and the European Union expressed condolences.
“We stand ready to support the Philippine government’s response as friends, partners, allies,” MaryKay Carlson, US ambassador to the Philippines, said in a post on social media platform X.
A desperate search
Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, Bogo city disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot told The Associated Press early Wednesday.
“It’s hard to move in the area because there are hazards,” said Glenn Ursal, another disaster mitigation officer, who added that some survivors were brought to a hospital from the mountain village.
Deaths also were reported from the outlying towns of Medellin and San Remigio, where three coast guard personnel, a firefighter and a child were killed separately by collapsing walls and falling debris while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game in a sports complex that was disrupted by the quake, town officials said.
The earthquake was one of the most powerful to batter the central region in more than a decade and it struck while many people slept or were at home.
A traumatized region
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology briefly issued a tsunami warning and advised people to stay away from the coastlines of Cebu and the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 1 meter (3 feet).
No such waves were reported and the tsunami warning was lifted more than three hours later, but thousands of traumatized residents refused to return home and chose to stay in open grassy fields and parks overnight despite intermittent rains.
Cebu and other provinces were still recovering from a tropical storm that battered the central region on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead mostly due to drownings and falling trees, knocking out power in entire cities and towns and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.
Schools and government offices were closed in the quake-hit cities and towns while the safety of buildings were checked. More than 600 aftershocks have been detected after Tuesday night’s temblor, Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology director Teresito Bacolcol said.
Rain-soaked mountainsides were more susceptible to land- and mudslides in a major earthquake, he warned.
“This was really traumatic to people. They’ve been lashed by a storm then jolted by an earthquake,” Bacolcol said. “I don’t want to experience what they’ve gone through.”
The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year.

LONDON: Britain’s King Charles III on Sunday led commemorations for the nation ‘s war dead, along with other senior members of the royal family including his son William and his wife Catherine.
The 76-year-old monarch, who is still undergoing treatment for an undisclosed cancer, laid the first wreath at a somber ceremony at the Cenotaph memorial in central London after the traditional two-minute silence at 11:00 am (1100 GMT).
Queen Camilla and Catherine, now in remission after her own cancer diagnosis, watched from the balcony of the Foreign Office overlooking the memorial.
Crowds lined the Whitehall area of the capital as political leaders, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, current and former members of the armed forces, and war veterans, paid their respects to British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in two world wars and other conflicts.
Around 10,000 armed forces veterans took part in a march-past, including around 20 who served in World War II.
Among those who took part was 101-year-old Sid Machin, one of the last survivors of the Burma (now Myanmar) campaign, who served as part of a special forces unit.
Other members of the royal family including Prince William also laid wreaths.
Prince Harry, 41, who is largely estranged from his family after quitting royal duties along with his wife Meghan in 2020, was not present.
Days ahead of the Remembrance Sunday events, however, he penned a piece released by his US office in which he expressed his pride at being British and urged people not to forget veterans.
The younger son of the king, who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan, said he had witnessed “courage and compassion in the harshest conditions imaginable.”
“But I also saw how easy it can be, once the uniform comes off, for those who gave everything, to feel forgotten,” he said.
On Saturday evening, William and Catherine’s eldest son, Prince George, 12, attended his first tribute for soldiers killed in action at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
It was the first time George, second in line to the throne, had attended the Festival of Remembrance event organized annually by the Royal British Legion, an association dedicated to supporting veterans and their families.
The event, always attended by the monarch and senior members of the royal family, featured readings, prayers, videos and musical performances — including a performance by Rod Stewart.

At least 69 people killed in a powerful earthquake that hit the Philippines