MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Strong Earthquake Rocks Chile

A strong earthquake rocked north central Chile Friday, damaging houses but causing no injuries, authorities said.

The 6.2-magnitude quake struck at 9:30 a.m. and was centered near Coquimbo, a Pacific coast city 350 miles north of Santiago, the capital, according to the Seismological Institute of the University of Chile.

The quake was felt for hundreds of miles, the government's Emergency Bureau said.

Alberto Gallardo, mayor of Ovalle, 250 miles north of Santiago, said the tremor caused minor damage, especially to older abode houses. Classes were suspended and children were sent home, Gallardo said.

Another strong earthquake struck a sparsely populated area in the Peruvian Amazon region around dawn Friday, causing no injuries or serious damage.

That quake had a magnitude of 5.7, according to Hector Aleman, an expert at the Peruvian Geological Institute.

A rare also, strong earthquake (deep under the earth's surface hit Brazil's remote Amazon jungle before dawn Friday, causing no known damage or victims, scientists said.

Prof. Vasile Marza of the University of Brasilia's Seismology Observatory told Reuters the quake's epicenter was 344 miles beneath the surface and of magnitude 7.

"It is a very lightly populated area, and probably no one even felt anything. ... But it is a pretty rare earthquake for Brazil," he said.

Latin America's largest country registered three earthquakes of that magnitude in the past 20 years, he added.

A magnitude 7 earthquake nearer the earth's surface and in a populated area would have been capable of causing widespread, heavy damage.

Marza said the number of strong tremors in the world had generally been low recently, raising the possibility an especially forceful earthquake is coming.