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AFP
KOS
A 6.7-magnitude undersea quake hit the Greek holiday island of Kos and the Turkish resort of Bodrum on Friday, killing two people and injuring hundreds in areas abuzz with nightlife.
The epicentre of the quake was about 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Bodrum, a magnet for holidaymakers, and 16 kilometres east of Kos, the US Geological Survey said.
"(There was) this loud rumbling noise and we all ran out... my four friends fell to the ground due to the place shaking so much," 18-year-old Briton Harriet Longley told AFP from Kos."We all crawled out and managed to get down the stairs where the other guests were screaming."
Television footage showed gutted stone buildings and island streets filled with rubble.
The quake, followed by scores of aftershocks, also toppled the minaret of an 18th-century Ottoman mosque and cracked the dock in the port of Kos, which has been shut down. A small tsunami sent fishing boats crashing into Kos harbour and damaged cars in the resort of Gumbet.
Police said a 22-year-old Swede and a 39-year-old Turk died in a mediaeval-era area full of cafes and nightclubs in Kos. Another man from Sweden lost his lower leg, and doctors are struggling to save his other leg, officials said.
Another man from Norway was in critical condition with a head injury, they said.
About 120 people were hurt in Kos and nearly 360 in Bodrum, many of them after jumping out of windows, officials and media reports said.
Ministers returning from a swift inspection of Kos insisted overall damage was minimal and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared the island was"coming back to normality".
The injured were found on the street in the Kos club area, crushed either by the collapsed wall of a bar or by stones that fell from old houses nearby.
In Turkey, some of the injured had broken bones.
