Powerful earthquake in eastern Turkey.

Recent Earthquake in Turkey

AFP - A strong earthquake of magnitude 7.3 according to the American Institute of Geophysics USGS, occurred Sunday afternoon in eastern Turkey, causing, according to Turkish media, considerable damage making and 50 wounded. Several houses and other buildings collapsed in the earthquake in the eastern province of Van, near the Iranian border, more than 1200 km east of the capital Ankara, reported the Anatolia news agency. She said 50 people had been hospitalized in the city of Van, where the airport was damaged and where the flights were diverted to Erzurum, about 400 km further north.

Anatolia said the aftershocks continued. One of them, occurred at 10:56 GMT and whose epicenter was located 19 kilometers northeast of Van, had a magnitude of 5.6, announced in the U.S. the USGS, the standard for earthquakes. The epicenter of the earthquake of magnitude 7.3 that occurred a quarter of an hour earlier at 10:41 GMT, was also 19 km northeast of the town and at a depth of 7.2 km, according to the USGS. The Kandilli seismology institute in Istanbul has meanwhile reported a magnitude of 6.6. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who was in Istanbul during the earthquake was to leave immediately for Van with several ministers, including Health, depending on the private television channel NTV.

"Some buildings were damaged, but we have not received information about the victims. The quake caused a great panic," said Mayor Van, Bekir Kaya on NTV. In general, in remote villages where the houses are built of mud there the most damage. The mayor stressed that the telephone network of Van, which has 380,000 inhabitants, was heavily damaged. The quake, felt in neighboring provinces, led to a major panic. The first images released showed people fleeing their homes in any order and at least two multi-storey buildings destroyed. The Red Crescent has mobilized and started to send tents and emergency workers in the disaster area. "It's a powerful earthquake can wreak havoc," said the chairman of the charity.

An earthquake of this force is more likely to cause substantial damage to Turkey that many homes were built without the standards are fully met, seismologists have warned quoted by TV channels. Turkey, which is crossed by several faults, particularly in eastern and north-west, has frequent earthquakes. Two strong earthquakes in densely populated and industrialized northwest to about 20,000 had died in August and November 1999, and experts agree that the Istanbul region is threatened by a strong earthquake. In 1970, an earthquake killed more than 1,000 deaths in the province of Kütahya in north-west.