Nine killed as powerful quake topples buildings in Albania

At least nine people were killed when the most powerful earthquake to hit Albania in decades rocked the capital Tirana and surrounding region on Tuesday, causing buildings to collapse and burying residents under rubble.
Residents, some carrying babies, fled apartment buildings in Tirana after the 6.4 magnitude quake struck shortly before 4 a.m. (0300 GMT).
In the town of Thumane, Marjana Gjoka, 48, was sleeping in her apartment on the fourth floor of a five-storey building when the quake shattered the top floors.
“The roof collapsed on our head and I don’t know how we escaped. God helped us,” said Gjoka, whose three-year-old niece was among four people in the apartment when the quake struck.
The quake was centered 30 km (19 miles) west of Tirana, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, and was also felt across the Balkans and in the southern Italian region of Puglia.
Hours later a magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit Bosnia, with an epicentre 75 km (45 miles) south of Sarajevo, monitors said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Two women were found dead in the rubble of an apartment building in the northern Albanian town of Thumane and a man died in the town of Kurbin after jumping out of a building, a Defence Ministry spokeswoman said. Another body was recovered from rubble in Thumane.
Four bodies were pulled from two collapsed buildings in the western town of Durres, the Defence Ministry said, and a man died near the northern town of Lezhe.Defence Minister Olta Xhacka said 135 people were injured.
Firefighters, police and civilians were removing the debris from collapsed buildings in Thumane. Most of the buildings that collapsed were built of bricks, a Reuters reporter said.
Rescuers in Thumane used a mechanical digger to claw at collapsed masonry and remove a tangle of metal and cables. Others groped with bare hands to clear rubble.
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.
Emergency workers told local media one of those killed was an elderly woman who had saved her grandson by cradling him with her body.