Authorities said the quake had generated a tsunami of undetermined size.
Peru's highly respected Cable news station Canal N reported that the 7.9 magnitude quake had caused a church to collapse in the city of Ica south of Lima, killing 17 people and injuring 70.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially issued a tsunami warning for the coasts of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama. A tsunami watch was issued for the rest of Central America and Mexico. It also issued a tsunami advisory for Hawaii.
The center later canceled the warnings and the watches, but it said the quake had caused a tsunami of unknown size.
"Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated," the center said on its Web site. It did not report the tsunami's size, but said it could be large enough to "be destructive" on coastal areas near the quake's epicenter.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake hit at 6:40 p.m. (7:40 p.m. EDT) about 90 miles southeast of Lima at a depth of about 25 miles. Four strong aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 5.4 to 5.9 were felt afterwards, the USGS said.
An Associated Press photographer said that homes had collapsed in the center of Lima and that many people had fled into the streets for safety. The capital shook for more than a minute.
Firefighters quoted in radio reports said that many street lights and windows shattered in Lima but did not specify if there were any injuries. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from Lima office buildings after the quake struck and remained outside, fearing aftershocks
Callers to Radioprogramas, Peru's main news radio station, said parts of several cities in southern Peru had been hit with blackouts. Callers reported homes in poor neighborhoods in Chincha and Cerro Azul had collapsed.
The quake also knocked out telephone service and mobile phone service in the capital. Firefighters were called to put out a fire in a shopping center. State doctors called off a national strike that began on Wednesday to handle the emergency.
Alex Kouri president of the Callao region, which includes the port of Callao, adjacent to Lima, urged residents to remain calm in the face of any possible tsunami, while other officials told Radioprograms they were going to evacuate La Punta, a Callao neighborhood, because of the potential threat of a tsunami.
In Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe ordered the partial evacuation of the southern city of Tumaco in response to the warning.
In a press conference, Uribe said residents living along the coastal areas of Tumaco, Colombia's southernmost city near the border with Ecuador, should immediately move to higher ground as a preventive measure in case a tsunami strikes.
"The reports we received about a possible tsunami are contradictory so we've asked that, according to emergency disaster plans, authorities immediately begin the partial evacuation of Tumaco," said Uribe.
The last time a quake of magnitude 7.0 or larger struck Peru's central coast was in 1974 when a magnitude 7.6 hit in October followed by a 7.2 a month later.
The latest Peru quake occurred in a subduction zone where one section of the Earth's crust dives under another, said USGS geophysicist Dale Grant at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.
Some of the world's biggest quakes strike in subduction zones including the catastrophic Indian Ocean temblor in 2004 that generated deadly tsunami waves.
