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Strong quake shakes eastern Turkey

A strong earthquake shook eastern Turkey on Monday, damaging buildings and injuring at least 11 people, two days after another quake in the region, authorities said.
/ Source: The Associated Press

A strong earthquake shook eastern Turkey on Monday, damaging buildings and injuring at least 11 people, two days after another quake in the region, authorities said.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 and was centered in rural Bingol province. It toppled several buildings that had been badly damaged in Saturday’s magnitude 5.7 temblor, officials said.

No deaths were reported, but Erkan Capar, a local official, told the Anatolia news agency that at least 11 people sustained injuries.

Television footage showed panicked residents huddling around fires outside to keep warm in the in the snow-covered area. Scores of people have been staying in tents since Saturday’s quake, and authorities were distributing more tents Monday.

Bingol is 430 miles east of Ankara.

Saturday’s earthquake damaged more than 200 hundred buildings and injured 16 people, according to the prime minister’s office.

Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which lies atop active fault lines. Two massive quakes killed some 18,000 people in 1999.