A Strong Earthquake in the Aegean Sea

The 6.7-magnitude quake hit 12km north-east of Kos, near the Turkish coast, with a depth of 10km, the US Geological Survey said. On Kos, around 115 people were injured, including tourists - 12 of them seriously. Some buildings were damaged. Turkish authorities said 358 were hurt in the Turkish city of Bodrum, but none seriously. The earthquake struck at 01:31 on Friday.

British student Naomi Ruddock felt the earthquake in Kos, where she was on holiday with her mother. "We were asleep and we just felt the room shaking. The room moved. Literally everything was moving. And it kind of felt like you were on a boat and it was swaying really fast from side to side, you felt seasick." Tourists later gathered outside terminal buildings at Kos airport having left their hotels and apartments.

In Turkey, some witnesses described waking in the night after being violently shaken in their beds.

Kristian Stevens, a British tourist in Didim, 90km (60 miles) from Bodrum, said the building he was in began to "shake like a jelly".

Residents fled their homes and tourists ran from holiday apartments with pillows and blankets. Some sustained injuries after jumping from windows in panic, Turkish broadcaster NTV said.

The earthquake also triggered high waves off Gumbet, a resort town near Bodrum, which flooded roads and left parked cars stranded, Turkish media report. There were no reports of casualties there.

Turkey and Greece sit on significant fault lines and are regularly hit by earthquakes. One of the deadliest in recent years hit the heavily populated northwest of Turkey, in 1999, killing some 17,000 people.