Eighteen people were killed and 27 injured when an earthquake hit remote villages in the eastern Turkish province of Agri on Friday, devastating the local stone and earth houses.  

Soldiers worked with residents to rescue people trapped in the rubble and set up tents and mobile kitchens for those made homeless, Anatolian news agency said. Istanbul's Kandilli Observatory said the quake measured 5.1 on the Richter scale.

An official at the local governor's office said the village of Yigincal, with about 100 houses, suffered severe damage in the quake, which struck three villages in Dogubayazit district near the Iranian border at 1:30 am (1830 GMT).

Residents wailed as bodies were pulled from the rubble in Yigincal, where all the 18 dead were found, Anatolian said. It said there had already been several aftershocks.

"Work is continuing on clearing away the rubble. There is also damage in other villages, but there are only slight injuries there," the official said.

The first television pictures from the scene showed emergency workers carrying the injured into an ambulance while locals looked on amid devastated one-story houses.

The remote Dogubayazit area is a destination for adventurous travelers who come to visit Mount Ararat and palace ruins on a hill near the main district town.

The Red Crescent aid organization said it had sent 500 tents and 500 blankets to the area along with two mobile kitchens, Anatolian reported.

Agri Governor Huseyin Yavuzdemir told CNN Turk television he did not think the death toll would rise, because it was summer. Many northeasterners move to homes in the mountains in summer months to escape the heat.

"The search and rescue is finished... There is no one in the rubble. These are not buildings that can withstand earthquakes, they are made of earth and stone. Some of the houses are made of concrete and those are fine," Yavuzdemir said.

The weather in the area was mild and locals spent the night outside, he said.

Earthquakes are common in Turkey, which is crisscrossed by geological fault lines.

Nine people were killed and dozens injured when a quake of the same magnitude hit Erzurum Province in eastern Turkey in March. A massive quake in August 1999 killed some 18,000 people in an industrial area of northwestern Turkey.

(China Daily via agencies, July 2, 2004)