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Powerful
quake jolts Turkey, hundreds feared killed
About 1,000
people may have died in the 7.3-magnitude quake which hit Turkey's southeastern province of Van Sunday, an official said.
The magnitude-7.3 quake's epicentre, with a depth of 7.20 km, was
initially determined to be at 38.6270 degrees north latitude and
43.5349 degrees east
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Istanbul: At least 138
bodies have been found after a magnitude-7.2 earthquake hit
Turkey's southeastern Van province Sunday, Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said early Monday.
More than 350 people were injured in the quake, he told Turkey's
TRT television.
Erdogan, who inspected the disaster area, said 93 bodies were
recovered in Van city in Van province and another 45 in the
worst-hit town of Ercis, also located in the same province.
Almost all the houses were destroyed in several villages in Van
province. Most of the houses there were made of sun-dried mud
bricks, Erdogan said.
More than 18 aftershocks, measuring magnitude-4 and above,
occurred.
The Turkish earthquake observatory earlier said the toll could
reach 1,000.
"The toll from this earthquake could be 500 to 1,000," Mustafa
Erdik, head of the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research
Institute in Turkey's largest city of Istanbul, was quoted as
saying by Xinhua.
The Istanbul-based Kandilli seismology centre originally reported
that the earthquake was 6.6 on the Richter scale, but later
revised it up to 7.2.
The epicentre was located in the village of Tabanli in Van
province, which borders Iran.
TV footage showed residents spilling out into the streets in panic
as rescue workers struggled to save people believed to be trapped
under collapsed buildings.
"There are so many dead. Several buildings have collapsed. There
is so much destruction. We need urgent aid, we need medics," Ercis
mayor Zulfikar Arapoglu told NTV television.
Turkish Red Crescent is sending tents, blankets and other aid
materials to the quake-hit province, according to Anatolia.
Turkey, lying atop the North Anatolian fault, is plagued by
frequent earthquakes. On March 8, 2010, at least 38 people died
after a magnitude-6 earthquake hit Elazig province.
On Aug 17, 1999, two powerful earthquakes, measuring 6.7 and 7.4,
hit northwestern and western Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.
A major earthquake had hit Van in November 1976, with 5,291
confirmed dead. The province has a population of just over one
million.
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