A boy rides his bicycle in heavy rain brought by a thunderstorm in Manila, the Philippines, on Jan. 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

A strong earthquake hit the southern Philippines on Sunday, though there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The 6.0-magnitude quake struck the town of Bansalan on Mindanao island at 12:22 pm, the USGS said.

The quake was recorded at a depth of 15.6 kilometers, it said, slightly shallower than at first reported by the agency.

"It was strong, but things did not topple or fall off," Major Peter Glenn Ipong, the police chief of Bansalan, told AFP by telephone from the epicenter.

Ipong and civil defense officials in the region reported strong shaking but said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The USGS in an earlier bulletin put the epicenter two kilometers east of the neighboring town of Magsaysay before revising the location to Bansalan.

The Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

The region around Bansalan, a town of 60,000 people, was struck by three deadly quakes over a two-week period in October 2019, killing at least 10 people.

AFP