Turkey building collapse: 12-year-old boy among two dead in Gebze

Two people have been killed and three injured after a seven-storey building collapsed in the northwestern Turkish city of Gebze on Wednesday, officials said.

All five victims belong to the same family, according to İlhami Aktaş, Gebze’s governor. State broadcaster TRT identified them as a 43-year-old man, a 37-year-old woman and their three children.

The body of 12-year-old Muhammed Emir Bilir was recovered from the rubble, but the second victim has not yet been identified, TRT reported.

A total of 22 people were hurt in panic-related falls, said İsmail Ustaoğlu, the governor of Balıkesir.

Hundreds of workers from the Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate are carrying out rescue operations at the site.

The cause of the collapse remains unknown, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. However, Gebze mayor Zinnur Büyükgöz told local reporters that nearby metro construction may have triggered the building’s failure.

Recent seismic activity

The Gebze incident comes days after a 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck western Turkey on Monday evening, causing three buildings and a two-storey shop to collapse in the town of Sındırgı in Balıkesir province.

No one was killed as the structures had been abandoned after sustaining damage in an earlier earthquake, officials said. Twenty-two people were hurt in panic-related falls, according to İsmail Ustaoğlu, the governor of Balıkesir.

The earthquake hit at 10:48pm local time at a depth of nearly 6km, the disaster management directorate said. Several aftershocks followed, and tremors were felt in Istanbul and the nearby provinces of Bursa, Manisa and Izmir.

Experts have called on Turkish authorities to enforce modern building codes, warning that failure to do so creates serious risks.

In January, two people died when a four-storey building collapsed in Konya. Shopkeepers are on trial over allegations they removed supporting columns.