Authorities in Chile have lifted a tsunami warning that was issued for the country's southernmost region after a major 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck in the Drake Passage, the body of water separating South America and Antarctica.
"The preventive evacuation is over. That means everyone can return and resume their activities," Juan Carlos Andrade, director of the state disaster agency in the remote southern Magallanes region, said.
Earlier, the country's emergency agency SENAPRED had requested the "evacuation of the sector of the coastline of the # Magallanes Region".
President Gabriel Boric echoed the call for the "evacuation of the coastline throughout the Magallanes region" on his X account.
Meanwhile, residents of the remote southern Argentine village of Puerto Almanza were ordered to evacuate the area over the threat of a tsunami.
"Residents of the Puerto Almanza area, located approximately 75 kilometers from Ushuaia on the eastern coast of the Beagle Channel, are asked to preventively evacuate the area and move to higher, safer ground," the government of Tierra del Fuego province wrote on its X account.
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at a shallow depth of 10km, 219km from the Argentine city of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego province and a similar distance from the Chilean town of Puerto Williams.
It placed the magnitude at 7.4, slightly below the 7.5 reported by Chile's National Seismological Center.
It struck at 9.58am local time (1.58pm Irish time) and several smaller aftershocks were also recorded.
Situated at the southern tip of South America, the Magallanes region is Chile's second largest but is sparsely populated and lies adjacent to Argentina's Tierra del Fuego province.
The governor's office of Tierra del Fuego said in Argentina "the earthquake was felt primarily in the city of Ushuaia and, to a lesser extent, in other towns throughout the province".
Chile is one of the countries most affected by earthquakes.
Three tectonic plates converge within its territory: the Nazca, the South American, and the Antarctic plates.
In 1960, the southern city of Valdivia was devastated by a magnitude 9.5 earthquake, considered the most powerful ever recorded, which killed 9,500 people.
In 2010, an 8.8 magnitude quake off the coast of central Chile, which triggered a tsunami, left more than 520 dead.
