BBC News - Eastern Turkey hit by 7.2 magnitude quake

23 October 2011 Last updated at 14:55

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Eastern Turkey hit by 7.2 magnitude quake

BBC reporter David O'Byrne: "There are people trapped under the rubble"

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake has hit eastern Turkey, causing deaths and injuries as buildings collapsed.

The quake hit just north-east of the city of Van, where Anatolia news agency said at least 50 people were injured.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office said there had been damage and deaths in Van but gave no firm figure.

Turkey is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because it sits on major geological fault lines.

Two earthquakes in 1999 with a magnitude of more than 7 killed almost 20,000 people in densely populated parts of the north-west of the country.

'We need medics'

Television pictures showed damaged buildings and vehicles in Van, and panicked residents spilling out into streets.

Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported that rescue workers were searching the wreckage of a seven-storey building in the city for people thought to be trapped in the rubble.

It said 50 people had been taken to hospital in Van with injuries.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said 10 buildings had collapsed in Van and 25-30 had collapsed in the nearby town of Ercis, Reuters news agency reported.

According to the Turkish Red Crescent, 25 buildings containing flats and one housing a dormitory had collapsed in Ercis, AP said.

In Van, local official Veysel Keser said: "Many multi-floor buildings, hotels and a dormitory were collapsed."

"We can hear voices from the collapsed buildings," AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

The mayor of Van, Bekir Kaya, told NTV television that initial damage assessments were proving difficult because "the telephone system is jammed due to panic".

Zulfikar Arapoglu, the mayor of Ercis, told NTV: "There are so many dead. Several buildings have collapsed, there is too much destruction."

"We need urgent aid, we need medics," he is reported by the Associated Press news agency as saying.

The BBC's David O'Byrne, in Istanbul, said emergency teams were searching through collapsed buildings and more teams were being sent from other parts of the country.

A Reuters news agency reporter in the town of Hakkari, around 100 km (60 miles) south of Van, said he felt his building sway for around 10 seconds, but there was no immediate sign of casualties or damage in Hakkari.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) originally gave the magnitude as 7.3 but later corrected it to 7.2. Turkey's Kandilli observatory gave it a preliminary magnitude of 6.6.

The USGS has revised the depth of the quake from 7.2 km (4.5 miles) to 20 km (12.4 miles), which is still relatively shallow and has the potential to cause damage.

Within one hour, two more aftershocks of magnitue 5.6 struck the same region.

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via bbc.co.uk