A shallow earthquake struck the central Peruvian Andes late on Saturday, killing at least five people, injuring more than twenty, and displacing 300 others, according to Peru’s National Civil Defence Institute (Indeci). The tremor hit at 21:24 local time, with its greatest destruction concentrated in the agricultural district of Chongos Bajo, roughly 300 kilometres east of Lima. There, traditional adobe homes collapsed, power outages spread across the Mantaro Valley, and rescue teams worked through the night to locate people feared trapped under debris.

Initial measurements exposed persistent gaps among monitoring agencies. The Peruvian Geophysical Institute (IGP) placed the magnitude at 5.1 with a depth of 24 kilometres, whereas the United States Geological Survey (USGS) registered 5.5 at just 10 kilometres. European centres, including the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), recorded 5.6 at a similar shallow depth. Such discrepancies, common in the early aftermath of seismic events, carry operational weight: shallower quakes transmit more destructive energy to the surface, influencing damage assessments and future building-code reviews. Peruvian authorities reported at least twelve aftershocks, the strongest of magnitude 3.7.

Indeci head General Luis Vásquez told Radio Exitosa that the combination of shallow depth and vulnerable construction—chiefly adobe and quincha, a cane-and-mud technique—accounted for the severe damage across several localities. The agency confirmed 48 homes destroyed and 300 people left homeless; the health ministry said eleven of the injured were transferred to the regional hospital in Huancayo. The sixteenth-century church of Santiago León in Chongos Bajo, a colonial landmark, sustained cracks and a leaning bell tower. In the sector of Pumpunya, described by residents as hardest-hit, livestock perished beneath collapsed barns and families sheltered outdoors awaiting government-delivered tents and blankets.

Peru lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where the Nazca and South American plates converge, producing roughly 400 quakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater annually. Seismologists note that uneven enforcement of building codes in rural areas leaves populations exposed even to moderate tremors. The country’s last major deadly earthquake, a magnitude‑7.9 event in the Ica region in 2007, killed nearly 600 people. The government of Prime Minister Luis Arroyo was expected to evaluate a possible emergency declaration for Chupaca province as more than 250 police and 50 firefighters continued search‑and‑rescue operations, and as the Ministry of Health deployed a field hospital to support overstretched local clinics.