At least 110 people dead after 7.4 magnitude earthquake strikes Colombia

In South America, a powerful earthquake struck Colombia on Monday, flattening buildings and killing dozens of people. ITV News Reporter Ellie Pitt has the latest

At least 110 people have died and dozens of buildings have collapsed after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit western Colombia and parts of neighbouring Ecuador, the Colombian President said.

President Abelardo de la Espriella said a further 87 people were injured as he declared an emergency to speed up funding to help with recovery.

“We aren’t going to leave people alone. They are in our hearts, and we are going to tend to people with our full determination,” he said.

The earthquake struck on Monday, with its epicentre in San José del Palmar, a municipality of about 4,800 people in Colombia’s Chocó region, about 250 miles west of Bogotá, according to the US Geological Survey and Colombia’s geological service (USGS).

The USGS said the quake hit at a depth of around 66 miles.

Before the president announced the latest death toll, local officials had confirmed at least 40 deaths in Risaralda, where the hard-hit city of Pereira is located, and 27 in Valle del Cauca, home to Colombia’s third-largest city, Cali.

At least three of those killed in Valle del Cauca were children, the governor said.

Local officials confirmed that at least 18 people were killed in the city of Pereira and two in Manizales.

The earthquake trapped residents under debris, left dozens injured, and forced people to evacuate their homes as far away as the capital, Bogotá.

Jorge Moncayo, a 64-year-old taxi driver in Colombia’s third-largest city, Cali, said he saw plumes of dust rise across the city from his home in the mountains as buildings collapsed following the earthquake.

Residents and rescue workers were already searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings on Monday morning.

“My entire house shook,” he said. “I’ve never lived through such a powerful earthquake.”

In Manizales, a city nestled in Colombia’s coffee-growing mountains, one of the towers of the neo-Gothic cathedral collapsed.

Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas said two people had died in the city “because of the quake” and urged residents to remain outside in case of aftershocks.

Local official Nubia Córdoba said on social media that “there are injuries and serious damage to buildings” in the regional capital of Quibdó, a city of about 130,000 people. She did not provide further details.

Footage shared by local media outlets showed homes and small buildings collapsing in the cities of Pereira, Cali, and Quibdó.

In Cali, a city of two million people, Mayor Alejandro Eder said residents were trapped in at least 19 collapsed buildings.

The tremor comes after two back-to-back magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes struck Venezuela in late June.

Those quakes destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed more than 5,000 people.