At least 100 people were killed after a powerful earthquake struck western Colombia early on Monday, toppling buildings across several cities and leaving people trapped under rubble.
The quake struck just days after Abelardo De la Espriella was sworn in as president, thrusting the new administration into its first major crisis, with memories still fresh of devastating twin earthquakes in neighbouring Venezuela in June.
The 7.4-magnitude quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, struck at a depth of 107 kilometres near San Josédel Palmar, in Chocó, a sparsely populated province on Colombia's Pacific coast. The tremor was felt in major cities across the country.
"Significant casualties and damage are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread," the agency warned.
The highest reported death toll was in the western province of Risaralda, in Colombia's coffee-growing region, where Governor Juan Diego Patiño told Caracol Television by phone that 42 people had been killed.
In the province's capital, Pereira, social media images showed a building with a cracked façade collapsing, sending up a dark cloud of dust and debris as people in the street ran to safety.
The earthquake also toppled one of the towers of a Gothic-style cathedral in Manizales and forced nurses in Cali to wheel patients outside in hospital beds, according to images shared on social media and television.
In Manizales, Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas said three people were killed.
One person died in Buenaventura, Colombia's main Pacific port, when a building collapsed, trapping several people, Mayor Ligia del Carmen Córdoba said.
Earthquakes and landslides in Colombia
Smaller earthquakes are not uncommon in Colombia, which is crossed by three ranges of the Andes. However, landslides have historically been among the deadliest natural disasters in the country, with the Armero disaster in 1985 killing about 25,000 people.
Cities in the country's coffee region, including Armenia and Pereira, were hit by a devastating 6.2-magnitude earthquake in 1999, which killed more than 1,000 people.
Colombia's civil aviation authority said flights were suspended at airports in Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura while inspectors checked for structural damage.
Reuters witnesses in the Venezuelan border state of Táchira and the central-western city of Barquisimeto said they had felt the earthquake.
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