72 hours after a powerful earthquake rocked eastern parts of Turkey killing hundreds of people and flattening some 3000 buildings, rescue teams today recovered a 2-week old baby girl alive from the debris of an apartment complex in the Ercis town.

Rescuers handed over the baby, identified as Azra Karaduman, to doctors immediately after she was taken out from the rubble.

Police said the rescue teams are unable to pull out the dead bodies of people killed or bring out those trapped inside from the debris consisting of mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction rods.

Meanwhile, government asked people not to enter into the damaged buildings and most of them spent a second night completely outdoor in near freezing conditions. Though the count of the killed in the earthquake is not known exactly, officials said nearly 1000 persons could have been killed. 1300 people were injured, according to reports.

Turkey, lying in one of the world’s most active seismic zones, suffered a human loss of 18,000 people in 1999 as two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck its northwestern parts.