AlHijjah 14, 1432, Nov 10, 2011, SPA - Rescue workers with pickaxes and earth-movers searched on Thursday for survivors of an earthquake that leveled a downtown hotel in the same Turkish province that was hit by a deadly temblor last month. At least eight people, including a Japanese aid worker, were killed in the new quake. Some 26 people were rescued in overnight digging in the provincial capital of Van in eastern Turkey. Some of those trapped in the rubble were foreign aid workers and Turkish journalists working in the aftermath of the powerful quake on Oct. 23 that killed about 600 people. The Bayram Hotel survived that magnitude-7.2 quake with some cracks and a damaged elevator. But it toppled in Wednesday's magnitude-5.7 quake, trapping an undetermined number of people under tons of concrete and twisted metal in a grim replay of the earlier destruction. The quake knocked down 25 buildings in Van, but only two buildings, both hotels, were occupied because others were evacuated after the first quake, Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said. "We focused on these two wreckage sites and are working with all our force," to find survivors, he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
