At least 69 people were killed in a powerful earthquake that struck the central Philippine province of Cebu.

The magnitude 6.9 earthquake , which occurred at about 10pm (14:00 GMT) on Tuesday, trapped an unspecified number of residents in collapsed houses, nightclubs, and other businesses in Bogo City and outlying rural towns within Cebu, officials said.

Rescuers scrambled to find survivors on Wednesday. Army troops, police, and civilian volunteers, supported by backhoe diggers and sniffer dogs, were deployed to conduct house-to-house searches for survivors.

The epicentre of the earthquake — triggered by movement along an undersea fault line at a dangerously shallow depth of 5km (3 miles) — was about 19km (12 miles) northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu prov

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