Man rescued from rubble as Turkey quake death toll hits 51

OZAN KOSE / AFP

A 70-year-old man was pulled from the rubble of a flattened building in Turkey early Sunday after being buried under the debris for 33 hours following a powerful earthquake.

The death toll from Friday afternoon's quake rose to 51. Turkish authorities have announced 49 deaths in the coastal city of Izmir, while two teenagers died on the Greek island of Samos.

The man, identified as Ahmet Citim, was rescued from the rubble of the residential "Riza Bey" building, one of the 20 residencies that collapsed during the earthquake.

Officials said 20 buildings were destroyed in Izmir's Bayrakli district which was in the process of urban transformation due to lack of earthquake resistance.

Turkey is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed 18,000 people in northwestern Turkey.

The Friday earthquake, which the Istanbul-based Kandilli Institute said had a magnitude of 6.9, was centered in the Aegean Sea, northeast of Samos.

President Tayyip Erdogan said 885 people had been injured, 15 of them critically.

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