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Seventeen dead in Turkish earthquake
ANKARA, June 27 (AFP) - At least 17 people died and several others were injured in an earthquake in southern Turkey Saturday which caused panic among the population, NTV television reported.
The epicentre of the quake, which hit Adana province and
surrounding areas and registered 6.3 on the Richter scale, was in
the vicinity of the city of Adana, according to the Kandilli Seismic
Institute in Istanbul.
The tremor struck at around 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) when the capital
of the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus also reported a
tremor.
Several houses were destroyed or seriously damaged in Adana,
where telecommunications and the water and electricity supply were
also disrupted, NTV said.
Firefighters were called in to deal with a number of fires, it
added.
Adana, which has a population of around one million, is the
fourth largest city in Turkey
Several aftershocks were recorded in both the Adana and
neighbouring regions -- including Gaziantep, Nigde, Kahramanmaras
and Hatay -- shortly after the initial tremor.
Turkey's Anatolia news agency said the quake provoked panic
among residents.
The quake in Cyprus, which lies some 150 kilometres (90 miles) to the south of Adana, lasted about 30 seconds, witnesses said.
Cyprus state radio reported that a "severe" quake rocked the
city and parts of the southern district of Limassol and that it was
followed by an aftershock around 10 minutes later.
"It would appear from first indications that the epicentre was
in the sea east of Cyprus," Kyriacos Solomis, seismologist at the
Geological Survey Department, told AFP.
The last major quake in Turkey was in October 1995, when over
100 people were killed in a tremor at Dinar, in the east of the
country, that measured six on the Richter scale.
Turkey lies on a seismic fault that runs east-west across the Mediterranean country, and is frequently hit by tremors.
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