A powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey on Sunday, collapsing apartment buildings and cutting communications and power in the city of Van and its surroundings.
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited the area late Sunday, said an unknown number of people were trapped as night fell and the temperature dropped. Monday morning, the Associated Press reported 217 people were killed.
Mr. Erdogan said 93 people died in Van and 45 more in the nearby town of Ercis. Around 350 people had been injured, he said. In Ercis, "the number of people under rubble is unclear," he said, adding that 55 buildings had collapsed in that town.
An eyewitness said a number of buildings in central Van collapsed, leaving people panicked in the streets, while as many as 1,000 people were thronging outside the local hospital.
After the quake, more than a dozen aftershocks were felt, according to Turkish television. The strongest one, at magnitude 5.7, shook Van just before midnight local time, when Mr. Erdogan was still visiting the region.
The prime minister's rapid response to the quake in the mainly ethnic-Kurdish region signaled the seriousness of the quake, and also the political importance of handling the disaster effectively.
The militant Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, is active in the region where the quake struck, and has many supporters there. Mr. Erdogan is working hard to win backing from ordinary Kurds for his effort to crush or marginalize the PKK.
In the town of Van, Sabahattin Alkan, who runs a tourism company, said, "The situation here is really bad. A lot of buildings have collapsed. There are no communications with the villages, so we don't know what is happening out there." His own home was severely damaged but standing, he said.
"A lot of people are trying to get out of town to stay with relatives in the villages," Mr. Alkan said. Power was down, he said. Rescue teams were using generators to light rubble in the dark, said Nasuh Maruki, director of AKUT, a Turkish rescue organization.
Around 10 buildings collapsed in Van, Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told reporters.
The Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute in Istanbul estimated the strength of the quake at 7.2 and said the death toll could rise to between 500 and 1,000. The observatory said aftershocks could continue for days or weeks.
That could complicate recovery as the risk of aftershocks keeps people out of their homes. Van is at an altitude of 1,750 meters, (5,750 feet), and snow is forecast this week.
Azerbaijan, Iran and Bulgaria sent rescue teams to the area, Mr. Erdogan told reporters, and the prime minister said numerous offers from other countries will also be considered if necessary.
Turkey, which sits atop two major earthquake faults, has extensive experience in earthquake rescue. Some 1,000 rescue personnel, medics and engineers, as well as search dogs and tents, were sent to the region from around Turkey, a spokesman for AFAD, Turkey's Emergency Management Agency, said.
Van suffered a large earthquake in 1976, when more than 5,000 people died. Turkey's most recent catastrophic earthquake was in 1999, around 60 miles east of Istanbul, when at least 17,000 people were killed. In 1939, 33,000 people were killed in a quake in Erzincan, also in eastern Turkey.
Israel, with which Turkey recently downgraded diplomatic relations, offered help dealing with the quake, as did the U.S., Greece and several other nations, Turkey's state Anadolu news agency reported. Relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated sharply over Israel's refusal to apologize for the killing of nine pro-Palestinian activists from Turkey by Israeli commandos last year, when the troops boarded a Turkish aid ship that was seeking to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.
"At this difficult time Israel is willing to provide any aid required anywhere in Turkey and at any time," Israeli President Shimon Peres told his Turkish opposite, Abdullah Gul, in a phone call, according to a statement on the Israeli president's website, Reuters said.
It wasn't clear if Turkey would accept Israel's offer of help. "Turkey has not made any request for international assistance. For now we are thanking whoever calls and noting their offer," said Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal. "We will be able to evaluate our particular needs after the relevant authorities have a real picture of what is going on."
Rivals Turkey and Greece broke the ice in their relationship in so-called earthquake diplomacy in 1999, when the large quake hit Istanbul. Greece and Turkey had come close to war in the mid-1990s over territorial disputes in the Aegean Sea.
The quake struck at 1:41 p.m. local time, its epicenter 16 kilometers (10 miles) north-northeast of Van, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The quake was at a depth of 20 kilometers (12.5 miles), according to the U.S. agency.
Van, with a population of just over one million, is close to the border with Iran. The wider region was already in turmoil, after Kurdish militants killed 24 Turkish soldiers on Wednesday, prompting a large-scale military response from Turkey on either side of the border with Iraq, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Van.
On Sunday, the military's general staff said it had sent three transport planes and natural-disaster teams to the earthquake zone. In a separate statement Sunday evening, the general staff said operations against the PKK were continuing.
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