7.8-quake rocks Ecuador, kills 233

President Rafael Correa said on Twitter that the death toll on Sunday had risen to 233, up from an initial count of 77 dead and 600 injured. He added that Vice-President Jorge Glas was on his way to the hard-hit city of Portoviejo on the Pacific coast. Glas called it the "worst seismic movement we have faced in decades.” The quake, felt across Ecuador, northern Peru and southern Colombia, struck at 6:58 pm local time on Saturday, lasting for about a minute and was centered approximately 170 km northwest of the capital Quito. No casualties were reported in Peru or Colombia. In Portoviejo, the temblor reduced houses to rubble, brought down a local market in a nearby community and left streetlights and debris scattered helter-skelter. According to Glas, 14,000 security forces, 241 medical staff and two mobile hospitals were being rushed to the most devastated areas, with reinforcements arriving from Colombia and Mexico. "We know that there are citizens trapped under rubble that need to be rescued,” he said in a special TV and radio broadcast. Officials declared a state of emergency in the six worst-hit provinces. The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the 7.8-magnitude quake struck off the northwest shore of Ecuador, just 27 km from the town of Muisne. The vice-president gave a slightly lower measurement of magnitude 7.6. Ecuador lies near a shifting boundary between tectonic plates and has suffered seven earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher in the region of Saturday’s quake since 1900, the USGS said. One in March 1987 killed about 1,000 people, it said. At least 55 smaller aftershocks rattled the country after the main quake, Glas said. The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre initially issued a warning for the nearby Pacific coastline but later said the threat had passed. AFP