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At least six people were killed, dozens were wounded and several towns in central Croatia were left in ruins after a powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and Croatian officials.

The full extent of casualties was not known and as daylight faded, emergency crews, assisted by the military, searched the wreckage for survivors.

The quake, which hit just after noon local time about 30 miles from the capital, Zagreb, could be felt across the Balkans and as far away as Hungary. It followed a smaller earthquake a day earlier and another in March, rattling residents in the earthquake-prone region.

The epicenter of the quake was near the towns of Petrinja and Sisak, which is home to the region’s largest hospital, rendered largely unusable because of damage. Although people injured in the quake were still being taken to the facility to be triaged, including two in critical condition, the government said it would evacuate the patients there. That effort would also include moving 40 coronavirus patients to other facilities.

There was no further information available on casualties.

“We have nowhere to come to work tomorrow — only the gynecology building remains, where we are currently taking care of the most seriously ill,” the director of the hospital, Tomislav Dujmenovic, told state TV. “We have nowhere to go tomorrow.”

At the moment the earthquake struck, he said, a woman was in labor and the procedure was moved outside. Both the mother and child are in good health.

The destruction caused by the earthquake was widespread across the city.

“Half the city’s capitol building collapsed — the city is in a very bad state,” the mayor of Sisak, Kristina Ikic Banicek, told state television. “We’re helping people as much as we can.” One person was reported to have been killed in the city.

In Petrinja, a town of around 25,000 people that still bears the scars from a major battle during the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the mayor said he walked by the body of a 12-year-old girl on the street.

“This is a catastrophe,” said the mayor, Darinko Dumbovic. “My city is completely destroyed,” he said in an emotional telephone interview from the scene that was broadcast on Croatian state television.

“We need firefighters, we don’t know what’s under the surfaces, a roof fell on a car, we need help.”

He added: “Mothers are crying for their children.”

In the nearby village of Glina, local officials said four people who died had been pulled from the rubble.

Images from Petrinja on social media and local television stations showed streets strewn with rubble, buildings with roofs caved in and rescue crews rushing to search for people who may have been trapped.

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In the moments after the earth stopped shaking, orange dust filled the air as car alarms sounded, church bells clanged and shouts for survivors echoed through streets.

In one dramatic rescue, a man and a child were pulled from a car buried under debris. The mayor told local reporters that he did not know the condition of the two people but that they appeared to be alive.

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