Working against the clock in freezing temperatures, Turkish rescue teams pulled more survivors from collapsed buildings Sunday, days after a powerful magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit the country’s east.
Authorities in Ankara, Turkey, said the death toll rose to at least 36 people.
Turkish television showed Ayse Yildiz, 35, and her 2-year-old daughter Yusra being dragged out of the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in the city of Elazig. They had been trapped for 28 hours after the earthquake struck Friday night.
The magnitude 6.8 quake also injured more than 1,600 people, but 45 survivors have been pulled from the rubble so far, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference Sunday in Istanbul.
"Turkey has begun to heal the wounds of this great disaster in unity, togetherness and coming together." -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
As overnight temperatures dropped to -5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit), emergency teams set up more than 9,500 tents for displaced residents and distributed 17,000 hot meals.
Rescue teams concentrated their efforts in the city's Mustafa Pasa neighborhood and the nearby town of Sivrice, the closest residential area to the quake’s epicenter.
Nearly 680 aftershocks rocked the region as more than 3,500 rescue experts scrambled through wrecked buildings to reach survivors, working around the clock. A magnitude 4.3 quake hit also neighboring Malatya province on Sunday morning, the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said.
The agency said 76 buildings were destroyed and more than 1,000 damaged in the quake. Unmanned aerial drones were being used to survey damaged neighborhoods and coordinate rescue efforts.
Erdogan said every effort was being made to alleviate conditions and promised to house displaced residents as soon as possible.
“Turkey has begun to heal the wounds of this great disaster in unity, togetherness and coming together,” he said.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu promised financial help for the victims of the quake.
The president visited the disaster zone Saturday to inspect the rescue operation, meet with injured people in the hospital and attend the funeral of a mother and son.
Erdogan also condemned what he called a “smear campaign” on social media by those questioning the Turkish government’s preparations for earthquakes. A prosecutor in Ankara has opened an investigation into social media posts about Friday’s quake.
Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which sits atop two major fault lines.
The quake hit Friday at 8:55 p.m. local time at a depth about 4 miles near Sivrice, AFAD said. Various earthquake monitoring centers gave magnitudes ranging from 6.5 to 6.8.
As Turkish officials began touring the region and assessing casualties and damages, the president of the Turkish Red Crescent (equivalent to the American Red Cross) called on local residents to donate blood.
Telephone service has been reported out in Elazig, and long lines are snaking around local gas stations.
Neighboring Greece, which is at odds with Turkey over maritime boundaries and gas exploitation rights, offered to send rescue crews should they be needed.
Elazig is about 350 miles east of the Turkish capital, Ankara.
Two strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey in 1999, killing about 18,000.
A magnitude-6 earthquake killed 51 people in Elazig in 2010.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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