nRescue crews with excavators searched for survivors trapped in toppled apartment buildings Tuesday after a powerful pre-dawn earthquake in Albania killed at least 16 people and injured more than 600.
The magnitude-6.4 quake was felt across the southern Balkans and was followed by multiple aftershocks, with several above magnitude 5. In nearby Bosnia, another temblor with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 struck southeast of the capital and rattled Sarajevo. There were no immediate reports of casualties and only minor damage in that earthquake.
The quake in Albania collapsed at least three apartment buildings while people slept, and rescue crews were working to free people believed trapped. There was no indication as to how many people might still be buried in the rubble. Local television stations showed footage of a young boy being pulled from a collapsed building in the coastal town of Durres, 33 kilometers (20 miles) west of the capital Tirana, after an excavator moved a broken slab of concrete and local men pulled mangled reinforcement bars out of the way.
Hours later, live TV footage showed people cheering as another child was found alive in a collapsed building in Durres where a body had been found earlier.
