At least 138 people have been killed and 350 others injured in southeast Turkey where a 7.2- magnitude quake struck Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said early Monday.

Local residents and rescuers search the ruins of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Van, Turkey, on Oct. 23, 2011. The Turkish earthquake observatory said Sunday the death toll from a powerful 7.2- magnitude quake in the southeastern province of Van could reach 1, 000.  [Xinhua]

Erdogan, who is inspecting the disaster area, was quoted by Turkey's TRT television as saying that 93 bodies were recovered in the city of Van in Van province and another 45 retrieved in the worst-hit town of Ercis, also located in Van province.

Almost all the houses were destroyed in several villages in Van province since the houses there were made of sun dried mud-brick, Erdogan said.

More than 18 aftershocks, which measured 4-magnitude and above, had happened, including one measured at 5.7-magnitude, TRT said.

The Turkish earthquake observatory said on Sunday that the death toll from the powerful 7.2- magnitude quake could reach 1, 000.

"The toll from this earthquake could be 500 to 1,000," said Prof. Mustafa Erdik, head of the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute in Turkey's largest city of Istanbul.

The Istanbul-based Kandilli seismology center originally put the magnitude of the earthquake at 6.6 on the Richter scale, but later revised it up to 7.2.

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