(Lima) A 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck northern Peru at dawn on Sunday, injuring 10 people and causing material damage, according to initial reports from Peruvian authorities.
The earthquake struck at 5:52 a.m. (10:52 a.m. GMT) the northern jungle as well as a large neighboring area of the central coast, the Peruvian National Institute of Geophysics said.
The latter locates the epicenter 98 km east of Santa Maria de Nieva, the capital of the province of Condorcanqui in the department of Amazonas, 860 km northeast of Lima near the border with the ‘Ecuador, at a depth of 131 km.
Santa Maria de Nieva is located in a sparsely populated area where indigenous people live, on the banks of the Nieva River.
According to the civil defense, the earthquake left ten people injured, and 75 houses were destroyed.
The earthquake also caused damage to infrastructure in at least two provinces of Ecuador, announced its president, Guillermo Lasso.
In Peru, the earthquake was felt over almost half of the territory, in the north and the center, especially in regions such as Piura, Tumbes, Lambayeque, Ancash and in the capital.
In Lima, located more than 1,000 kilometers south of the epicenter, people took to the streets in some neighborhoods.
The Peruvian capital, populated by 10 million inhabitants, had already been shaken earlier Sunday morning by another quake of magnitude 5.2.
“We all went out into the streets, we are very scared,” Lucia, from the town of Chota in the Cajamarca region, where Peruvian President Pedro Castillo is from, told RPP radio by telephone.
“The shock was immense,” also testified to RPP radio Hector Requejo, the mayor of the district of Santa Maria de Nieva, which has 2,500 inhabitants. He said that a few houses made of dried earth and timber had collapsed.
In the district of La Jalca, also in the department of Amazonas, the 14-meter-high bell tower of a colonial church has collapsed.
Power cuts have been reported in affected areas.
Peru is rocked by at least 400 noticeable earthquakes every year, as it is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of land-based activity that stretches along the western coast of the American continent.
On August 15, 2007, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake whose epicenter was located on the central coast shook the port of Pisco, killing 595 people.