Powerful 7.8 Earthquake Strikes Mindanao, Killing at Least 32 and Triggering Tsunami Warnings

A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the southern coast of the Philippines early Monday morning, killing at least 32 people, injuring more than 200, and setting off tsunami warnings across a wide stretch of the Pacific that reached as far as Japan's Okinawa islands before being lifted later in the day.

The quake struck at 7:37 a.m. local time on June 8, 2026, with its epicenter off Sarangani province in southern Mindanao, according to the United States Geological Survey. The depth was recorded at approximately 10 kilometers, making it a shallow event — the category most likely to cause significant surface damage and trigger tsunamis. Philippine seismologists confirmed it as the most powerful earthquake to hit the country since 1990.

Buildings Collapsed, Landslide Kills 14

The hardest-hit area was the coastal zone around Sarangani and the city of General Santos, a major urban center of roughly 722,000 people in southern Mindanao. Buildings cracked and collapsed across the region within seconds of the shaking beginning.

In General Santos, a multi-story building housing a Jollibee restaurant and a Love Radio studio collapsed. A donation center nearby was also destroyed. A high school in Matanao, a municipality in the Davao region, partially collapsed, though initial reports indicated no students were inside at the time.