13 dead, hundreds hurt as powerful earthquake jolts Albania

ALBANIA: Albanian rescuers were digging through rubble as desperate survivors trapped in toppled buildings cried out for help Tuesday after the strongest earthquake in decades claimed at least 13 lives.

The 6.4 magnitude quake struck at 3:54 am local time (0254 GMT), with an epicentre 34 kilometres (about 20 miles) northwest of the capital Tirana in the Adriatic Sea, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.

A total of 13 people have now been found dead, according to the defence ministry, while around 38 people have been rescued alive.The worst damage was in and around the coastal city of Durres, a tourism destination on the Adriatic, where soldiers, police and civilian forces were working to reach those believed to be trapped inside buildings that were reduced to dust.

Many of the dead were pulled from the ruins in Durres and the nearby town of Thumane.Families looked on in horror as emergency workers sifted through the rubble of a collapsed five-storey building in Thumane, as those trapped cried out to be rescued.

Relatives shouted the names of their loved ones still inside: “Mira!”, “Ariela!”, “Selvije!”.A survivor, a thin man covered in grey dust, was seen carried out on a stretcher.

Dulejman Kolaveri, a man in his 50s in Thumane, told AFP he feared his 70-year-old mother and six-year-old niece were trapped, because they lived on the fifth floor of the building.“I don´t know if they are dead or alive. I´m afraid of their fate... only God knows,” he said with trembling hands.

Arben Allushi, another Thumane local, told AFP with tears in his eyes that his wife and niece were in the building when it fell.Not far away in Kurbin, a man is his fifties died after jumping from his building in panic, the ministry said. Another perished in a car accident after the earthquake tore open parts of the road, it added.