The death toll from a 5.5-magnitude earthquake that jolted central Colombia has risen to 11, authorities said Sunday.
At least 54 people were injured and about 5,000 were affected Saturday when the earthquake struck Meta province, said Jairo Duvan Pineda, director of Colombia's Civil Defense.
Among the dead were six people killed on a highway linking Bogota and Villavicencio, the provincial capital of Meta. Three of the six were members of the same family -- a father, mother and son -- whose car was struck by falling rocks.
In the rural town of Quetame, the most seriously hit, about 70 houses and a church were seriously damaged, residents said.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake's epicenter was at 54 km east-southeast of Bogota at a depth of 10 km.
In 1999, Colombia's coffee-growing region was hit by a 6.2-magnitude quake, which killed at least 1,230 people in the country's worst natural disaster in the last decade.
|
