French and US embassy building damaged in Vanuatu earthquake

As a result of an earthquake off the coast of Vanuatu, the building housing the French and U.S. embassies was damaged. This was announced on Tuesday, December 17, by the French Ambassador to Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands Jean-Baptiste Jeanjean Wilmer.

"A very strong earthquake in Vanuatu destroyed the embassy (the building is divided into two parts, and the first floor of the American embassy is completely destroyed)," he wrote on his page in X (former Twitter).

The diplomat specified that none of the staff was not injured, but in the capital Port Vila there is no water and light, power outages and suspended traffic.

Earlier in the day it was reported that a tsunami threat was announced off the coast of Vanuatu after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake. In the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) specified that the earthquake occurred at a depth of 43 km at a distance of 25 km from the city of Port Vila. As a result, one person was killed.