Home Reports Turkey earthquake death toll reaches 31

Turkey earthquake death toll reaches 31

Friday’s main quake hit at 8:55 p.m. local time (1755 GMT).

Turkish rescue teams continued to pull survivors from collapsed buildings Sunday.

More than a day and a half after a powerful earthquake hit the country’s east, killing at least 31 people, officials said.

The magnitude 6.8 quake injured 1,556 people, and 45 people had been pulled from the rubble so far.

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 some 17,000 hot meals.

Nearly 600 aftershocks rocked the region as rescue teams worked. A magnitude 4.3 quake hit Puturge district in the neighboring Malatya province on Sunday morning.

Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which sits atop two major fault lines.

A pair of strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey in 1999, killing around 18,000 people.