Durrs – Albanian rescuers searched rubble through
the night looking for survivors trapped in buildings that toppled on Tuesday in
the strongest earthquake to hit the country in decades, with more than 20 dead
and hundreds injured.
Teams of soldiers, police and emergency workers
sifted through the debris of shredded apartment blocks and hotels in towns near
Albania's northwest Adriatic coast, close to the epicentre of the 6.4 magnitude
earthquake that rattled the country before dawn.
By evening, the toll was 22 dead, according to the
defence ministry. Most were pulled from wreckage in the coastal city
of Durres and Thumane, a town north of the capital Tirana.
In neighbouring Kurbin, a man in his fifties died
in the morning after jumping from his building in panic. Another perished in a
car accident after the earthquake tore open parts of the road, the ministry
said.
More than 40 people have also been retrieved alive
in marathon rescue efforts that continued with headlamps and spotlights after
the sun went down.
"The rescue teams will continue all
night," defence ministry spokesperson Albana Qehajaj told AFP.
"We must be careful because the night makes
any operation more difficult," she added.
Earlier in Thumane, locals watching emergency workers
comb over a collapsed building shouted the names of their loved ones still
inside: "Mira!", "Ariela!", "Selvije!".
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
inside the five-storey apartment, because they lived on the top floor.
"I don't know if they are dead or alive. I'm
afraid of their fate... only God knows," he said with trembling hands.
There were also brief bursts of joy during the day
as rescuers delicately extracted survivors.
One thin, middle-aged man covered in a film of grey
dust was seen being carried out of the rubble on a stretcher in Thumane.
In Durres, onlookers cheered "Bravo!" as
a team used ropes to rescue a young man from the wreckage of a toppled seaside
hotel in a two-hour operation.
Night in the stadium
Afraid to return home after a series of powerful
aftershocks, hundreds of people in Durres took shelter for the night in tents
set up in the city's football stadium.
The health ministry said that more than 600 people
have received first aid for injuries, mostly minor.
During a visit to victims in a hospital in Tirana,
Prime Minister Edi Rama told local media that Wednesday would be a national
"day of mourning".
"We have lost human lives, we have also saved
a lot of lives," he said.
Some 300 local soldiers and 1 900 police officers
were sent to Durres and Thumane to assist with the rescue efforts, according to
authorities.
Aid also poured in from around Europe, with teams
from Italy, Greece and Romania among those deployed to help.
Albania's cities and coastline have undergone rapid
development in recent decades, and illegal construction ignoring building codes
is rife.
Felt across the Balkans
Tuesday's quake was the strongest to hit the Durres
region since 1926, seismologist Rrapo Ormeni told local television.
Albanian authorities described it as the most
powerful in the last 20-30 years.
It struck at 03:54 local time, with an epicentre 34km
northwest of Tirana, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological
Centre.
In Tirana, panicked residents ran out onto the
streets and huddled together after the quake struck.
Several powerful aftershocks followed, including
one of 5.3 magnitude.
The tremors were felt across the Balkans, from
Sarajevo to Belgrade and the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad almost 700km away,
according to reports in local media and on social networks.
The Balkan peninsula lies near the fault line of
two large tectonic plates – the African and Eurasian – and earthquakes are
frequent.
The movements of the small Adriatic micro-plate
also produce earthquakes, according to Kresimir Kuk from the Croatian
seismological institute.
The most devastating quake in recent times hit
North Macedonia's capital Skopje in July 1963, killing around a thousand people
and destroying some 80% of the city.
