Strong Quake Rocks Peru, Killing Dozens

A powerful earthquake shook southern Peru on Saturday, killing at least 47 people and damaging dozens of homes, churches and buildings, officials said.

The quake, with a magnitude measured at up to 7.9, hit Peru at 3:30 p.m. and was felt as far as Bolivia.

Twenty-one people were killed in Arequipa, Peru’s second-largest city, located about 500 miles southeast of Lima, the capital, said Santiago Montenegro of Peru’s Civil Defense Institute. Sixteen people were killed and 50 injured in the city of Moquegua, southwest of Arequipa, he said.

“For the love of God, please send help,” a woman could be heard screaming while a radio reporter described the destruction in the streets of Moquegua.

Nine people were killed in Tacna, near the border with Chile, Montenegro said. A soccer field was turned into an treatment center for about 200 victims, Tacna Mayor Luis Torres said.

In the small coastal town of Camana, 455 miles southeast of Lima, one person was killed and 39 injured, a hospital official said.

At least 30 people were injured in northern Chile, four of them seriously, the government said.

The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., said the quake’s magnitude was 7.9 and its center was off Peru’s Pacific coast, 120 miles west of Arequipa.

Peru’s Geophysical Institute said the quake’s magnitude registered 6.9 in Arequipa. The difference could not be immediately explained.

At least 47 homes collapsed in Arequipa, initial reports said. The city’s imposing cathedral, constructed in 1656 but rebuilt after an earthquake in 1868, also was damaged.

Television images showed large chunks of stonework that had crumbled on one of the elaborate steeples. The other steeple had fallen over.