Powerful quake kills 21 in Albania as buildings bury residents

"EVERYTHING KEPT FALLING"

In Thumane, seven people, including a mother and son, were found dead in the brick rubble of two apartment buildings and a man died in the town of Kurbin after jumping out of a building.

Firefighters, police and civilians were removing the debris from collapsed buildings in Thumane. Some used a mechanical digger to claw at collapsed masonry and remove a tangle of metal and cables. Others scrabbled with their bare hands.

Two people were pulled from rubble in Thumane four hours after the quake, a Reuters reporter said. Doctors said they were in a bad condition.

"Everything at home kept falling down," Refik, a Tirana resident, said of the impact on his sixth-floor apartment.

"We were awake because of the previous quakes, but the last one shook us around," he told Reuters, referring to smaller tremors recorded in the hour before the main quake.

Rescuers told local media one of the dead was an elderly woman who saved her grandson by cradling him with her body.

"Durres and Thumane are the areas worst hit. Rescue-and-save work continues in the collapsed buildings there," Xhacka, the defence minister said, as troops extricated a victim from a stricken hotel in Durres.

Italy, France, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia sent 200 specialised troops, tools and teams of tracker dogs to help the relief effort, Xhacka said.

An unidentified man, with a wound dressing on his right cheek, told News24 TV his daughter and niece were among those trapped in a collapsed apartment building in Durres.

"I talked with my daughter and niece on the phone. They said they are well and are waiting for the rescue. Could not talk to my wife. There are other families, but I could not talk to them," the man said.