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Up to 1,000 people were feared dead today after a powerful earthquake hit Turkey.
The 7.2-magnitude tremor devastated parts of Van province in the east of the country, collapsing dozens of buildings into piles of twisted steel and chunks of concrete.
Desperate survivors dug into the rubble with their bare hands, trying to rescue the trapped and injured.
The worst hit was Ercis, a town of 75,000 close to the Iranian border in one of Turkey´s most earthquake-prone zones. Twenty-five to 30 buildings collapsed including a dormitory
 
At least 85 have been killed and 150 injured, but scientists estimated that up to 1,000 people could be dead, due to low housing standards in the area and the size of the quake.
An eight-storey building with shops underneath was flattened. Residents sobbed outside the ruins, hoping that missing relatives would be rescued.
CNN-Turk television showed one young man crying: ´My wife and child are inside! My 4-month-old baby is inside!´
Witnesses said eight people were rescued from the rubble, but frequent aftershocks were hampering search efforts.
´There are so many dead, but we don´t know the number,´ town mayor Zulfukar Arapoglu told NTV
 
Safe but shocked: A young woman falls to her knees in the city centre of Van
We are waiting for emergency help, it´s very urgent. We need tents urgently and rescue teams. We don´t have any ambulances, and we only have one hospital. We have many killed and injured.´
The Turkish Red Crescent reported its rescuers pulled several injured people out of a collapsed dormitory in the town, which sits on a geological fault line.
Camps were being set up to shelter people and blankets, food and water were being sent along with mobile kitchens. Military aircraft were helping with the rescue and relief efforts.
Emergency teams were trying to rescue people believed to be trapped in a building in Van, a bustling city with many apartment buildings near the Iranian border, state-run news agency Anatolian said
Residents ran onto the streets in panic as 50 wounded were taken to the hospital there, but it was not known how serious their injuries were. They were treated in the courtyard of the hospital, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
The Kandilli Observatory, Turkey´s main seismography centre, said the earthquake struck at 1041 GMT and was 5km deep. The U.S. Geological Survey earlier reported that the magnitude was 7.6.
Eight aftershocks were recorded within three hours of the initial quake, including two with a magnitude of 5.6.
Mustafa Erdik, head of the Kandilli observatory said: ´We are estimating a death toll between 500 and 1,000.´
´There are many people under the rubble,´ Veysel Keser, mayor of Celebibag, told NTV. ´People are in agony, we can hear their screams for help. We need urgent help."
´It´s a great disaster. Many buildings have collapsed, student dormitories, hotels and gas stations have collapsed.´
Some houses also collapsed in the province of Bitlis, where at least one person, an eight-year-old girl was killed, authorities said. The quake also toppled the minarets of two mosques in the nearby province of Mus.
Television pictures showed damaged buildings and vehicles, crushed under falling masonry, and shocked residents wandering in the streets.
Race against time: Rescue efforts continue into the night to save people still trapped under debris
Turkish media said phone lines and electricity had been cut off. Aftershocks continued after the initial quake, whose epicentre was at the village of Tabanli, north of Van city.
In Hakkari, a town around 100 km (60 miles) south of the city of Van in southeastern Turkey, a building could be felt swaying for around 10 seconds during the quake. There was no immediate sign of any casualties.
Two large quakes in 1999 killed more than 20,000 people in northwest Turkey. Two people were killed and 79 injured in May when an earthquake shook Simav in northwest Turkey.
The quake also caused panic among residents in several Iranian towns, close to the Turkish border, and caused cracks in some buildings in Chaldoran and cut telephone links, said the Iranian state TV website.
The quake was also felt in Salmas, Maku, Khoi and
Note : It´s hard to find words at times like this, May God help those people and RIP those who lost their lives..
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