MOSCOW, January 25. /TASS/. At least 19 people were killed and more than 770 injured in a powerful earthquake that struck eastern Turkey on Friday evening, the republic’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Saturday.
"We’ve lost 19 citizens. We have 221 injured persons in Malatya and 551 - in Elazig," the Anadolu news agency quoted the minister as saying.
The disaster struck at 20:55 local time (same as Moscow time) on Friday, at the depth of 10 km. Its epicenter was located in the eastern province of Elazig with a population of about 400,000 people. The tremor was felt in adjacent Turkish provinces, as well as in Israel, Iraq and Syria. The Turkish department for emergency situations and natural disasters said the quake was followed by at least 35 aftershocks with magnitudes ranging between 2.5 and 5.4.