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Survivors of Turkish quake dig for missing
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CBC News
Desperate survivors of a powerful earthquake in eastern Turkey dug into the rubble with their bare hands Sunday, trying to reach trapped and injured people. The quake collapsed dozens of buildings and killed at least 85 people, officials said.
State-run TRT television reported that 59 people were killed and 150 injured in the eastern town of Ercis, 25 others died in Van and a child died in the nearby province of Bitlis.
But officials in the mountainous region, one of the country's poorest, fear the earthquake's toll will be much higher.
About 45 buildings, including a student dormitory, collapsed in the most powerful quake to hit this part of Turkey in at least a decade, said Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay.
The earthquake struck eastern Van province, close to the Iranian border at 1:41 p.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Atalay said 25 to 30 buildings collapsed In Ercis, on Lake Van, and about 10 in the city of Van to the south. Video from Ercis, home to about 80,000 people, showed panic-stricken residents running through the streets in clouds of dust.
Next to a flattened eight-storey building, which had shops on the ground floor, residents sobbed, hoping their missing relatives would be rescued.
"My wife and child are inside! My four-month-old baby is inside!" CNN-Turk television showed one young man crying.
Kandilli Observatory, Turkey's main seismography centre, estimated that 500 to 1,000 people were killed, CNN-Turk reported. The estimate is based on the strength of the quake and the structure of the housing in the area, the centre said.
Trapped in wreckage
The U.S. centre originally gave the quake's magnitude as 7.3 but later corrected it to 7.2. It said the quake had a depth of 20 kilometres, which is relatively shallow and could potentially cause more damage. Several strong aftershocks were also reported.
Telephone and other services were knocked out, and search and rescue teams from other parts of Turkey were being forced to land at an airport a 90-minute drive away on damaged roads.
"There are so many dead," said Zulfikar Arapoglu, the mayor of Ercis, told NTV television. "Several buildings have collapsed, there is too much destruction. We need urgent aid, we need medics."
The Kandilli observatory earlier gave the quake a preliminary magnitude of 6.6. Its epicentre was in the village of Tabanli in eastern Van province.
Israel was the first nation to offer Turkey humanitarian assistance on Sunday, despite relations between the two countries remaining strained following an 2010 Israeli navy raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, in which nine Turks were killed.
U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement Sunday he was following reports on the earthquake "with great concern" and vowed the United States is ready to help.
Poor construction blamed
Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which is crossed by fault lines. In 1999, about 18,000 people were killed by two powerful earthquakes that struck northwestern Turkey. Authorities blamed shoddy construction for many of the deaths.
Many buildings in Van province, with a population of about 350,000, are also old and poorly built, unlike those in Istanbul and other more affluent areas, where the government has insisted on better engineering and buildings able to withstand quakes.
According to the Ercis municipal website, town meetings earlier this year focused on earthquake safety in the town, located in one of Turkey's most quake-prone zones. Officials promised to crack down on shoddy, unlicensed construction.
"We may only need earthquake-safe buildings for only 30 to 40 seconds every 30 to 40 years, but we need those buildings right now," Arapoglu is quoted as saying. "You can't guess when there will be an earthquake."
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