A magnitude-6.9 earthquake on the Pacific Coast jolted a wide area of southern Mexico and Central America Monday, killing at least three people while damaging homes, hospitals and churches, according to Reuters.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hit at 6:23 a.m. on the Pacific Coast 1 mile north-northeast of Puerto Madero, near the Guatemala border. It initially calculated the magnitude at 7.1 but later lowered the figure to 6.9, Reuters reported.
The national spokesman for local fire departments, Raul Hernandez, said at least two people died in their homes from collapsed walls in the Guatemalan town of Pati, in the border province of San Marcos, and another woman in Quetzaltenango died from a heart attack, according to Reuters.
Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said later in a press conference that the only officially confirmed death so far was of a newborn hit by a piece of false ceiling in a San Marcos hospital, but he said it wasn't clear if the woman's heart attack was earthquake related, Reuters reported.
Civil protection officials in the Mexican state of Chiapas raised the death toll to two, and said at least a dozen people were injured by falling tiles and other debris, according to Reuters.
Perez said the quake was felt in 12 of Guatemala's 22 states, Reuters reported. There were reports of power outages and rock slides on some roadways in Guatemala.
Photos posted on social media sites and published by the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre showed buildings with huge cracks across their facades in San Marcos, and one which apparently suffered a partial collapse, according to Reuters.
The quake was felt across a broad swath of southern Mexico and as far away as Mexico City, but officials had no immediate reports of damage, Reuters reported. The quake was centered 37 miles beneath the surface.
