Powerful quake hits eastern Turkey. Thousands are feared killed

Death toll reaches 200 and is set to rise as rescue teams battle to pull survivors out of rubble.

by Alfred Kola

As many as 1,000 people were feared killed on Sunday when a powerful earthquake hit southeast Turkey filling the air with cries of panic and horror. The quake measured 7.2 magnitude on Richter scale and struck the city of Van and neighboring towns in the area close to the Iranian border.

Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said 100 people were killed in the city of Van and 117 in the badly hit town of Ercis, 100 km (60 miles) further north and a total of 1,090 people were known to have been injured.  

Reuters reports that in Van, an ancient city on a lake ringed by snow-capped mountains and with a population of 1 million, cranes were used to shift the rubble of a crumpled six-storey apartment block where bystanders reckoned there were around 70 people trapped.

"We heard cries and groaning from underneath the debris, we are waiting for the rescue teams to arrive," Halil Celik told Reuters as he stood beside the ruins of a building that had collapsed before his eyes.

"All of a sudden, a quake tore down the building in front of me. All the bystanders, we all ran to the building and rescued two injured people from the ruins."

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited Ercis earlier by helicopter to assess first hand the scale of the disaster.

"We don't know how many people are in the ruins of collapsed buildings, it would be wrong to give a number," he said.
Reuters television images from Ercis showed rescuers trying to free one young boy, aged about 10, pinned beneath a concrete slab.

Anatolian news agency reported that 200 prisoners escaped from Van's prison after the quake, but 50 returned after seeing their familes.

Turkish media said phone lines and electricity had been cut. The quake's epicentre was at the village of Tabanli, 20 km north of Van city, Kandilli said.

International offers of aid poured in from NATO, China, Japan, the United States, Azerbaijan and European countries. Israel, whose ties with Ankara have soured since Israeli commandoes killed nine Turks during a raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip in 2010, offered aid in the disaster, but the Turkish government declined the offer.

Turkey lies in one of the world's most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.

(Reuters)