Hundreds of earthquake survivors huddled in aid tents and around bonfires in eastern Turkey, seeking relief from the winter cold after a strong temblor knocked down stone and mud-brick houses in five villages, killing at least 51 people.
The damage appeared worst in the Kurdish village of Okcular, which was almost razed. At least 15 of the village’s 900 residents were killed, the Elazig governor’s office said on Monday, and the air was thick with dust from crumpled homes and barns.
The pre-dawn earthquake caught many residents as they slept, shaking the area’s poorly made buildings into piles of rubble.
Panicked survivors fled into the narrow streets of this village perched on a hill in front of snow-covered mountains, with some people climbing out of windows to escape.
“I tried to get out of the door, but it wouldn’t open. I came out of the window and started helping my neighbors,” Ali Riza Ferhat of Okcular told NTV television. “We removed six bodies.”
The Kandilli seismology center said the 6.0 magnitude quake hit at 4:32am on Monday near the village of Basyurt in a remote, sparsely populated area of Elazig Province.
The region is 550km east of Ankara, the capital.
The US Geological Survey listed the quake at magnitude 5.9.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kandilli Observatory’s director, Mustafa Erdik, urged residents not to enter any damaged homes, warning they could topple from aftershocks that Erdik said could last for days.
More than 100 aftershocks measuring up to magnitude 5.5 shook the region on Monday alone.
In addition to the deaths, 34 people were being treated for injuries, Turkey’s crisis center said.
Abdulkerim Sekerdag, 72, said he had just risen for early morning prayers when the quake hit.
“The jolt threw me onto the ground,” he said. “When I got up I checked my animals and then I checked on my neighbors.”
“Two of them were buried. We pulled them out,” he said, adding that they were alive but injured.
Men used shovels and bare hands to dig two bodies out from under piles of dirt, rubble and concrete blocks, video footage showed.
Both bodies were covered in blankets and carried away.
One appeared to be a baby or young child.
Women in veils gathered near the rescue scenes, some crying.
“Everything has been knocked down, there is not a stone in place,” said Yadin Apaydin, administrator for the village of Yukari Kanatli, where three died.
Most of the dead were immediately buried according to Muslim traditions. A few funerals had to be put off until yestereday.
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