At least 19 people were confirmed dead and more than 130 injured on Monday after a powerful earthquake struck the southern Philippine island of Mindanao at 7.37am local time, collapsing buildings in General Santos City and triggering tsunami alerts across the region, police and disaster officials said.
The magnitude‑7.8 quake hit as millions of pupils were returning to public schools for the new academic year, adding a sharp edge of panic to what should have been a routine Monday morning. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the epicentre was about 13km south‑west of General Santos City, at a shallow depth of 10km in its initial bulletin, while the US Geological Survey put the depth at 55km. Those discrepancies are typical in the early hours of a major quake, when agencies are still refining their readings and racing to get basic information out.
