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| People rescue two women trapped under debris in Van eastsern Turkey after a powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey |
As aftershocks rocked the region, some 100 others were feared dead and more than 1,000 were wounded after the most powerful quake in a decade struck the southeastern part of the country, near the Iranian border.
Search teams clawed through piles of debris, and in some cases, the cries of survivors buried alive beneath the ground could be heard.
"Be patient, be patient," rescuers told a boy who was trapped under a slab of concrete, with the hand of a lifeless adult visible in front of his face, according to Reuters.
Another survivor, Yalcin Akay, was dug from a collapsed six-story building after he used his cell phone to call police, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. He had suffered a leg injury.
The 7.2-magnitude quake struck about 10.40 a.m. Sunday and lasted for 25 thunderous seconds, reducing vast sections of the city of Van and town of Ercis to a wasteland of debris.
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| A Turkish mother walks among the debris as she looks for her daughter trapped inside. (Burhan Ozbilici/AP) |
The mainly Kurdish area also suffered more than 200 aftershocks between Sunday and Monday morning, causing further panic in the devastated region.
"I just felt the whole earth moving and I was petrified. It went on for ages. And the noise, you could hear this loud, loud noise," a resident, Hakan Demirtas, 32, told Reuters.
"My house is ruined," he said, sitting on a low wall after spending the night in the open air.
"I am still afraid; I'm in shock. I have no future, there is nothing I can do."
Aid teams handed out food and blankets to the homeless, who spent a cold night huddling around camp fires in the streets.
Even if their homes had not collapsed, most were too scared of aftershocks to sleep indoors, and makeshift tents and field hospitals were hastily assembled.
"We stayed outdoors all night, I could not sleep at all; my children, especially the little one, was terrified," Serpil Bilici said, referring to her six-year-old daughter, Rabia.
"I grabbed her and rushed out when the quake hit, we were all screaming."
Power outages affected whole parts of the region, hampering rescue efforts.
Generators were brought in to power floodlights and, as rescuers worked, anxious family members paced nervously by piles of rubble, near where their loved ones were last seen.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan arrived in the area to see the damage first-hand, and Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said the death toll was not expected to be as high as initially feared.
"There could be around 100 people (in the rubble). It could be more or it could be less," he said. "But we are not talking about thousands.
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