In Panama, where earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, television images showed elderly residents reduced to tears in the streets as a series of weaker aftershocks rattled the country.
"We're scared. It's just the two of us old folks here. The house has cracked, and we're afraid it could fall on us," said Ricardo Brown, 74, speaking by phone from the Las Minas area in Herrera province in southern Panama, where he noted the quake damaged a number of homes.
Tremors were felt in Panama City, where buildings shook.
The quake's epicentre was close to the rural community of La Pitaloza in a sparsely populated area of Herrera, near the Pacific coastline.
Shaking was also felt as far as San Jose, the capital of neighbouring Costa Rica, according to a Reuters witness.
Omar Smith, who heads Panama's civil protection agency, told local outlet Telemetro Reporta that the effects of the quaken had been reported in Chitre, the capital of Herrera, and along the coast in Los Santos province.
Videos shared by newspaper La Prensa showed the tower of a historical building had collapsed along with several balconies of a residential building in Penonome, a city about halfway between the epicentre and Panama City.
In the capital, the service on two lines of the Panama City Metro was temporarily suspended for safety reasons, the operator said.
Panama's ministry of education ordered the closure of all schools across the country.
The quake prompted the US Tsunami Warning System to warn that hazardous tsunami waves were possible along parts of the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico within the next three hours.
Panama was due to hold a drill on Monday to test the country's emergency response capabilities against earthquakes.
with AP
