At least four people have been killed and 120 injured after a powerful earthquake in the Aegean Sea toppled buildings in the Turkish city of İzmir and caused damaged in several Greek islands.
Turkey disaster management authority said four people had died after the quake, measuring about 7.0 in magnitude, struck at 14.51pm local time on Friday. One of the dead had drowned, the authority said.
The number of dead is expected to rise, with the mayor of Izmir telling the television channel CNN Turk that at least 20 buildings had collapsed in the city, which is home to 4.5 million people.
The epicentre was about 11 miles (17 km) off İzmir province and eight miles northeast of the Greek island of Samos, at a relatively shallow depth of about 10 miles.
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Turkey’s disaster and emergency management agency put the magnitude lower than the US Geological Survey, at 6.6, while the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9.
Significant damage has also been reported in Bornova and Bayraklı, the Turkish interior minister, Süleiman Soylu, tweeted.
Greek media also reported rockfalls and some damage on the island of Samos, which is home to 45,000 people and where buildings are mostly lowrise. Local residents have been urged to stay away from coastal areas in case of a tidal wave or further tremors, Efthymios Lekkas, the head of Greece’s organisation for antiseismic planning, told Skai TV.
Unverified footage on social media also showed sea water flooding the Turkish coastal city of Seferihisar and several Greek islands.
Mazlum Vesek, a reporter for local newspaper Ege Telgraf in Izmir, told the Guardian that he had visited a hospital emergency room and counted scores of wounded people.
Vesek said he was walking down the street when the quake struck and “the ground flipped under my feet like a rug,” he said, sharing photographs and video of people screaming and trying to dig out survivors from one of the city’s collapsed apartment blocks .
“There are no numbers for deaths and casualties yet but the hope of not having any is really low looking at the buildings collapsed here in [worst hit neighbourhood] Manavkuyu, he said.
“People are all out on the streets because they don’t want to go inside.”
Search and rescue operations are now underway across Izmir province, with Turkish television broadcasting dramatic footage of local residents using chainsaws to cut through the wreckage of collapsed buildings while shouting for onlookers to be quiet so they can hear people trapped inside. At least one woman appears to have been rescued alive from the rubble so far.
Some shaking was also felt in both Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, some 500km away, and Athens, the capital of Greece, although no damage was reported in either city, and as far away as Bulgaria.
Turkey, which encompasses several active fault lines, is no stranger to deadly earthquakes. The most devastating in recent history was a 7.4-magnitude quake, which hit the western Marmara region in 1999, leaving more than 17,000 dead.
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