earthquake strikes Taiwan

At least four people are dead and 225 injured — including tourists — after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck just off the east coast of Taiwan late Tuesday, local police said.

As of Wednesday morning 145 people were unaccounted for, according to CNA, Taiwan’s official news agency, with four buildings in the area either tilting or already collapsed.

The quake was centered in the East China Sea about 21 kilometers (13 miles) north of the city of Hualien. Light shaking was felt in the capital of Taipei, about 120 kilometers north of Hualien, according to reports sent to the US Geological Survey.

Scores are unaccounted for in Hualien, Taiwan, following a magnitude 6.4 earthquake.

The Marshal Hotel in downtown Hualien was one of the buildings that collapsed, Jeff Lin with the Hualien Police Department said.

About 400 rescue workers scrambled to locate people, and a crane was brought in to help, footage from CNN affiliate SET TV showed. One building apparently had collapsed onto what once was the ground floor.

f56e6d44814ed9_56e6d44814f18.thumb Turkey has begun security operations against Kurdish rebels in the country’s south-east and in Iraq as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed a crackdown on terror after Sunday’s attack in Ankara that killed at least 37 people, BBC News reports.

According to the source, a curfew was declared in three towns in south-east Turkey, while warplanes struck PKK camps in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Eleven warplanes carried out air strikes on 18 targets including ammunition dumps and shelters in the Qandil and Gara sectors, the army said. The PKK (the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party) confirmed the attacks. Meanwhile curfews have been imposed in two mainly Kurdish towns in south-eastern Turkey, Yuksekova and Nusaybin, as security operations are carried out against Kurdish militants, Anadolu news agency reports.

As reported earlier, at least 37 people were killed and some 125 civilians wounded in a blast in the center of Ankara on Sunday. The car bomb blasted at a bus stop near one of Ankara’s central squares.
No group has admitted carrying out the attack in Ankara, yet government sources have cast suspicion on the PKK.

Earlier unnamed officials said the female bomber was a member of the PKK from the eastern town of Kars who joined the group in 2013.

Scores missing after deadly 6.4-magnitude earthquake strikes Taiwan

Terrorist State of Turkey strikes against Kurdish rebels, “After Ankara False-Flag operation”