Istanbul The powerful earthquake that hit the Aegean Sea on Friday has killed 55 people in Turkey, the country’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Sunday. Two people also died on the Greek island of Samos, Greek authorities said.
Rescue workers continue to search for survivors under the wreckage of eight buildings in the city of Izmir, in western Turkey.
Koca said there was “no clear number on how many people are still under rubble. Hard to give a number. There is an estimation, but I cannot share.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that 103 people had been rescued from the debris so far.
Members of security forces walk past a collapsed building in Izmir, 터키, 토요일에.
A total of 20 buildings were seriously damaged in Izmir by the tremor, according to Izmir Mayor Tunc Soyer, the majority of them in the middle-class Bayrakli district.
적어도 896 people were injured in the quake in Turkey. Of those, 218 continue to receive hospital care and the rest were discharged after medical treatment, the minister said.
Hundreds of aftershocks have been registered since the initial quake, according to Turkey’s disaster agency.
Greek authorities said Friday that two teenagers, a boy and a girl, died on Samos after a wall collapsed on them.
The earthquake also triggered what authorities called a “mini tsunami,” causing streets to flood Friday in parts of Turkey’s wider Izmir province, as well as on Samos.
Emergency services personnel search the scene for survivors in Izmir on Saturday.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) measured the tremor’s magnitude at 7.0, while Turkish authorities said it was 6.6. The quake struck 14 킬로미터 (8.7 마일) northeast of the town of Néon Karlovásion on Samos, the USGS reported.
It hit at a relatively shallow depth of 21 킬로미터 (13 마일), the USGS reported, making its impact powerfully felt at ground level around the epicenter.
