Earthquake death toll in Turkey rises to 35

The provisional death toll in Turkey caused by the earthquake that shook large parts of the Aegean Sea on Friday amounts to 35 while more than 800 people have been injured, three of them seriously, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca informed on Saturday.

"We have lost 35 lives. There are eight people in intensive care, three of them in serious condition, out of a total of 243 people still under treatment," the minister said at a press appearance in Izmir broadcast by NTV.

Hours earlier, Koca had tweeted that another 642 people had been treated by the health services but had already been discharged.

Izmir, Turkey's third largest city with four million inhabitants, is the place most affected by the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that struck at 11.51 GMT yesterday, Friday, with its epicentre in the Aegean Sea.

Of the 37 deaths recorded so far, two have been on the Greek island of Samos, located 10 kilometres south of the epicentre.

Another death occurred in the Turkish coastal town of Sigacik, 30 kilometres to the north, where an elderly woman drowned in the small tsunami triggered by the earthquake, while the rest of the deaths took place in the Turkish town of Izmir, 60 kilometres to the north.

In this city, Turkey's third after Ankara and Istanbul, 17 buildings partially or totally collapsed, and the rescue work has been completed in nine of them, but continues in another eight, according to the Turkish emergency service AFAD's website.