An earthquake of 6.8 on Richter Scale struck eastern Turkey last evening, killing 34 people in Elazig province and four in the neighbouring province of Malatya. More than 1,600 others were hurt, Turkey’s AFAD disaster authority said.
Much of the damage occurred in and around Turkey’s Aegean resort city of Izmir, which has three million residents and is filled with high-rise apartment blocks. Rescue teams supported by thousands of emergency workers from other provinces and by hundreds of volunteers had pulled 45 people from under the rubble since the quake, AFAD disaster authority said.
Some of the world’s strongest earthquakes have been registered along a fault line that runs across Turkey to Greece. In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey’s northwest, killing more than 17,000 people, including 1,000 in Istanbul