Turkey’s health minister says four people have been killed and 120 injured in a powerful earthquake off the west coast of the country and parts of Greece.
“Unfortunately, four of our citizens lost their lives in the earthquake,” Health Minister Fahretin Koka tweeted, destroying buildings in the Turkish coastal resort city of Izmir.
Two teenagers on the Greek island of Samos have died after a wall of a building collapsed following a strong earthquake in the Aegean region. Firefighters said.
Public television ERT reported that students between the ages of 15 and 17 were the first reported victims in Greece.
Both the boy and the girl were confirmed dead when they were found unconscious at the site of the wall collapse in the island town of Vathi.
Images on social media showed water flowing through the city streets from the storm.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu said on Twitter that six buildings had collapsed in two districts of Izmir province.
He said there were no reports of injuries from the other six quake-hit provinces, but there were small cracks in some buildings.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) has raised the magnitude of the quake to 6.6, while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was 7.0.
According to media reports, it was experienced this morning on the Aegean coast of Turkey and in the northwestern Marmara region.
The epicenter was reported at a depth of 16 km, 17 km off the coast of Izmir province.
The US Geological Survey said the depth was 10 km and the source was 33.5 km off the coast of Turkey.
Effitihmios, head of Greece’s organization for anti – earthquake planning, told Sky TV that residents of the Greek island of Samos, which has a population of about 45,000, had been asked to stay off the coast.
“It was a big earthquake, and it’s hard to have a big earthquake,” Lacas said.
High tide warnings were in place in Samos.
Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya, who was affected by the quake, said there were no negative reports.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted that he was ready to “help every means available to our state.”
Turkey is one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.
A previous earthquake in 1999 killed at least 17,000 people when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook the region of Istanbul in northwestern Turkey.
Another earthquake in 2011 killed at least 600 people in the southeastern province of Van.
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