A pow­er­ful earth­quake with a pre­lim­i­nary mag­ni­tude of 7.6 struck Sat­ur­day off the south­ern Philip­pine coast, prompt­ing many vil­lagers to flee their homes in pan­ic around mid­night af­ter Philip­pine au­thor­i­ties is­sued a tsuna­mi warn­ing.

The quake struck at 10:37 p.m. at a depth of 32 kilo­me­tres (20 miles), ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey. There were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of ma­jor dam­age or ca­su­al­ties.

The Pa­cif­ic Tsuna­mi Warn­ing Cen­ter ini­tial­ly said that based on the mag­ni­tude and lo­ca­tion, it ex­pect­ed tsuna­mi waves to hit the south­ern Philip­pines and parts of In­done­sia, Palau and Malaysia. But the cen­tre lat­er dropped its tsuna­mi warn­ing.

In Japan, au­thor­i­ties is­sued evac­u­a­tion or­ders in var­i­ous parts of Ok­i­nawa Pre­fec­ture, in­clud­ing for the en­tire coastal area, af­fect­ing thou­sands of peo­ple.

Tere­si­to Ba­col­col, the head of the Philip­pine In­sti­tute of Vol­canol­o­gy and Seis­mol­o­gy, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press his agency ad­vised res­i­dents along the coast of south­ern Suri­gao del Sur and Davao Ori­en­tal provinces to im­me­di­ate­ly evac­u­ate to high­er ground or move far­ther in­land.

Own­ers of boats in har­bours, es­tu­ar­ies or shal­low coastal wa­ters off the two provinces should se­cure their boats and move away from the wa­ter­front, the quake agency said in its tsuna­mi warn­ing. Boats al­ready at sea should stay off­shore in deep wa­ters un­til fur­ther ad­vised, it said.

Based on the quake’s mag­ni­tude, Ba­col­col said a 1-me­ter (3.2-foot) tsuna­mi may hit but the wave could be high­er in en­closed coves, bays and straits.

Vil­lagers were flee­ing their homes to safe­ty around mid­night in Hi­nat­u­an town and out­ly­ing ar­eas in Suri­gao del Sur province, ac­cord­ing to au­thor­i­ties and the gov­ern­ment’s dis­as­ter-re­sponse agency, which said that it could not im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide spe­cif­ic de­tails.

Pic­tures post­ed on Hi­nat­u­an gov­ern­ment’s Face­book ac­count show res­i­dents flee­ing to high­er ground on foot or aboard cars, trucks, mo­tor­cy­cles and tri­cy­cle taxis at night.

More than three hours af­ter the quake hit, Ba­col­col said there was no re­port of a tsuna­mi hit­ting the coast from his agency’s field of­fices but added au­thor­i­ties would con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing.

The Philip­pines, one of the world’s most dis­as­ter-prone coun­tries, is of­ten hit by earth­quakes and vol­canic erup­tions due to its lo­ca­tion on the Pa­cif­ic “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seis­mic faults around the ocean. The arch­i­pel­ago is al­so lashed by about 20 ty­phoons and storms each year.

MANI­LA, Philip­pines (AP) —