Theme: Panama

The United States has sent hundreds of soldiers to Panama for training, an activity it will repeat later in Honduras and Colombia, according to The New York Times, cited by El País. The military detachment is preparing to take part in special operations against drug trafficking cartels, according to sources at the newspaper cited by El País.

The Pentagon will send hundreds of troops to Latin America, according to The New York Times, in a report published Wednesday (14) and cited by G1. The first members of a battalion of about 600 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division have begun moving to a jungle training center in Panama. The expansion also includes transferring MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones from Africa to Colombia and Ecuador and creating a new command structure for Western Hemisphere operations based in Miami.

A second earthquake of magnitude 6.6 struck Panama on Friday (9), according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The quake had a depth of 10 kilometers and occurred on land in the Río Grande region, in the west of the country. According to a bulletin from Panama's National Civil Protection System, there are no confirmed deaths, but injured people have been taken to hospitals. The most affected provinces are Coclé, Veraguas and Los Santos, according to the agency.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck southern Panama on Friday at a depth of 10 kilometers, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which downgraded an earlier estimate of magnitude 8.0. About 4.6 million people felt moderate to severe shaking, with the epicenter about 10 km from Pitaloza Arriba and shallow aftershocks, according to the BBC. The United States National Weather Service (NWS) issued tsunami warnings for Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and Chile also issued a naval warning, according to Al Jazeera.