Ankara, May 20: An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale has rocked western Turkey, killing two people, shattering windows and damaging old buildings in one town, reports say.
The quake, with its epicenter in the town of Simav, shook the Kutahya province on Thursday at 23:15 local time (2015 GMT), the Istanbul-based Kandilli seismological institute said.
Kutahya province lies about 310 kilometers (190 miles) west of the capital Ankara.
The quake was felt as far as the Aegean city of Izmir, northwestern city of Bursa, Istanbul and the city of Edirne, close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders, it said.
In Kutahya province, one person died after jumping out of his window while an elderly woman died of a heart attack in another town, provincial Governor Kenan Ciftci told NTV24.
Around two dozen people have been injured mostly suffering from injuries from broken glass or jumping off of balconies, but there were no reports of serious injuries, the Associated Press quoted the governor as saying.
Telephone lines and electricity has been cut off in Simav and “we are trying to restore it,” Ciftci said.
At least one derelict building collapsed in Simav and some other old buildings were also slightly damaged, said the Anatolia news agency.
The quake was followed by about 50 aftershocks, the strongest with a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 shook Kutahya, said Mustafa Erdik, head of the Kandilli Observatory. He warned of more aftershocks in the coming days.
Turkey is prone to earthquakes due to being crossed by several fault lines.
In March 2010, a 6.0-magnitude quake knocked down houses in five villages in eastern Turkey, killing 51 people.
In 2003, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake killed 177 people in the southeastern city of Bingol, including 84 children when a school dormitory collapsed.
In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18 to 20,000 people.
——Agencies