Moro Gulf, Philippines, January 28 (ANI): An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 struck the Philippines on Wednesday, according to a statement from the National Center for Seismology.
The quake occurred at a depth of 40 kilometers, the agency said. In a post on X, the NCS stated, “EQ of M: 6.0, on January 28, 2026, at 12:17:05 IST, latitude 6.48 north, longitude 123.83 east, depth 40 kilometers, location: Moro Gulf, Philippines.”
The Philippine Sea borders the country to the east and forms a vast part of the western Pacific Ocean, with its floor comprising the Philippine Sea Plate. While the Philippines has sovereign rights over its adjacent waters, known as the West Philippine Sea within the South China Sea, the broader Philippine Sea is a large oceanic basin shared with other nations, including Japan and Taiwan.
The Philippines lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a tectonic belt of volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches in the Pacific Ocean that is prone to frequent seismic activity.
John Dale B. Dianala, an assistant professor at the National Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told Al Jazeera that the country’s geographic and geologic setting makes it home to numerous onshore and offshore tectonic faults.
“The whole length of the Philippines, around 1,800 kilometers, lies along the boundary of two major tectonic plates — the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate — part of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire,” he said. “These two plates, thousands of kilometers wide, have been pushing against each other for millions of years at two to three times the rate of fingernail growth.”
Dianala explained that earthquakes represent the periodic release of stress along long fractures in the Earth’s crust, known as faults, which can rupture by several meters during major events.
“When the displacement involves vertical uplift of the seafloor from an offshore fault, such as in the Philippine Trench east of the country, the movement displaces the water column from the depths of the ocean, which can propagate to the surface and coastlines in the form of tsunamis,” he said. “Strong shaking can also cause submarine landslides that may trigger tsunamis.”
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