The death toll because of the massive earthquake in Turkey climbed to 91 with more than a thousand injured. The country’s disaster and the emergency authority said 740 people have been discharged so far.
It was the deadliest earthquake in Turkey since one in the eastern city of Van in 2011 that killed more than 500 people. A quake in January this year killed 41 people in the eastern province of Elazığ.
Turkey is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed 18,000 people in north-western Turkey.
A three-year-old girl was rescued from a collapsed building in the western Turkish city of İzmir on Monday, nearly three days after a powerful earthquake.
Fourteen-year-old Idil Sirin was also removed from the rubble on Monday after being trapped for 58 hours! Her eight-year-old sister, Ipek, did not survive, NTV television reported.
Rescue workers in western Turkey also pulled out a 70-year-old man from a collapsed building, AP reported, citing Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca. The minister said the rescued man, identified as Ahmet Citim, was in a stable condition.
The earthquake that hit Turkey and Greece on October 30 had also triggered a small tsunami in Samos, where an elderly woman drowned.
Rescue efforts continued in eight buildings in the western Turkish city of Izmir, also the third-largest city of Turkey and the worst hit because of the earthquake.
Also Read 7.0 Strong Magnitude Earthquake Killed 26, Injured more than 840 in Turkey, Greece.
More than 3,500 tents and 13,000 beds have been supplied to provide temporary shelter in Turkey, and nearly 8,000 personnel and 25 rescue dogs were involved in rescue and relief work
There was a debate on the magnitude of the earthquake. The US Geological Survey rated it 7.0 while the Istanbul-based Kandilli Institute said that the Earthquake had a magnitude of 6.9, was centered in the Aegean Sea, northeast of Samos.
There have since been nearly 1,200 small and medium aftershocks!