Rescuers search for casualties of quake in Turkey

At least 270 people died and a thousand more were seriously injured.

Worst-hit was Ercis – an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border where about 80 multi-storey buildings collapsed.

Yalcin Akay was one of the lucky ones, dug out from a collapsed six-story building with a leg injury after he called a police emergency line on his mobile phone.

Three others, including two children, were also rescued from the same building in Ercis 20 hours after the quake struck.

Rescuers searched for the missing throughout the night under generator-powered floodlights as tearful families members waited by the mounds of debris. Cranes and other heavy equipment lifted slabs of concrete, allowing residents to dig for the missing with shovels.

Aid groups scrambled to set up tents, field hospitals and kitchens to help the thousands left homeless or those too afraid to re-enter their homes.

More than 100 aftershocks rocked the area yesterday morning, with three of them reaching 4.7 magnitude, after another 100 aftershocks reverberated on Sunday.

The bustling, larger city of Van, about 55 miles south of Ercis, also sustained substantial damage, but Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said search efforts there were winding down.

He expected the death toll in Ercis to rise, but not as much as initially feared. He said rescuers were searching for survivors in the ruins of 47 buildings – including a café where dozens could be trapped.

“There could be around 100 people (in the rubble). It could be more or it could be less But we are not talking about thousands.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “close to all” mud-brick homes in surrounding villages had collapsed in the tremor that also rattled parts of Iran and Armenia.

In Ercis, a team specialising in mine disaster rescue combed through the rubble of a student dormitory and witnesses described local people working by torchlight in freezing conditions, using their bare hands to shift rubble to reach survivors.

“I was in the street and saw the buildings sway,” Hasan Ceylan, 48, surveying the wreckage of his three businesses, including a grocery store and a veterinary clinic.

Abubekir Acar, 42, was sipping tea with his friends across from a coffee house that was levelled.

“We did not understand what was going on, the buildings around us, the coffee house all went down so quickly,” he said. “For a while, we could not see anything – everywhere was covered in dust. Then, we heard screams and pulled out anyone we could reach.”

Mayor Zulfikar Arapoglu said: “There are so many dead. Several buildings have collapsed. There is too much destruction. We need urgent aid. We need medics.”

The Turkish Red Crescent said its volunteers were working to provide aid for people in the disaster-stricken area. It said the quake was the most powerful to hit Turkey in more than a decade, and equal to the one that struck Haiti early in 2010.

“Turkish Red Crescent workers and volunteers have already rescued an unconfirmed number of survivors from the rubble of a student dormitory which collapsed in the city of Ercis which has a population of 75,000 and is close to the Iranian border,” a spokesman said. “Turkish Red Crescent rescue workers in Ercis say at least 25 buildings containing flats, including the one housing the dormitory, collapsed in the quake.”

Vital supplies were being sent to the region, including essential blankets and tents as temperatures fall to near freezing at night.

The government said it would offer favourable loans to help rebuild small businesses. Authorities advised people to stay away from damaged homes, warning they could collapse in the aftershocks.

Exhausted residents began sheltering in tents, some set up inside a sports stadium, after many spent the night outdoors lighting fires to keep warm.