"ATTENTION! #SENAPRED, due to the threat of a tsunami, requests the evacuation of the sector of the coastline of the # Magallanes Region," Chile's emergency agency SENAPRED wrote on its social media account.

President Gabriel Boric echoed the call for the "evacuation of the coastline throughout the Magallanes region" on his X account.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers, 219 kilometers from the Argentine city of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego province and a similar distance from the Chilean town of Puerto Williams.

It placed the magnitude at 7.4, slightly below the 7.5 reported by Chile's National Seismological Center.

It struck at 9:58 am local time (1258 GMT), and several smaller aftershocks were also recorded.

Situated at the southern tip of South America, the Magallanes region is Chile's second largest but sparsely populated, and lies adjacent to Argentina's Tierra del Fuego Province.

The governor's office of Tierra del Fuego said in Argentina "the earthquake was felt primarily in the city of Ushuaia and, to a lesser extent, in other towns throughout the province."

It added that "for the moment there have been no reports of material damage or people affected."

Chile is one of the countries most affected by earthquakes.

Three tectonic plates converge within its territory: the Nazca, the South American, and the Antarctic plates.

In 1960, the southern city of Valdivia was devastated by a magnitude 9.5 earthquake, considered the most powerful ever recorded, which killed 9,500 people.

In 2010, an 8.8 magnitude quake off the coast of central Chile, which triggered a tsunami, left more than 520 dead.