In his statement, carried by the Anatolia news agency, Durmus said that the toll could rise as rubble-clearing work in the quake zone continued. Friday's tremor with an epicenter at Duzce town, measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and followed a 7.4-quake on August 17, which devastated Turkey's northwestern industrial heartland and killed some 20,000 people.

Meanwhile, Turkish rescuers on Saturday removed a 19-year-old university student from the rubble of a building in the same town, 25 hours after the earthquake, the Anatolia news agency said.

After 12-hours of hard work, a civil defence team freed Onder Atac from a five-storey building where he was living with another student and an old woman, the report said.

Meanwhile, in the northwestern Turkish city of Bolu, a pregnant woman was extricated fromunder a collapsed building after rescuers amputated her arm, Anatolia said. Turkish troops had struggled since late Friday to pull out the woman, identified as Nilgun, but could not free her arm. She was flown to the Gulhane military hospital in Ankara on a helicopter after the operation, Anatolia added.

On Saturday, three men and a woman were rescued from the rubble of collapsed multi-storey buildings in Duzce and Kaynasli. In Kaynasli, civil defence teams freed a woman and a man from the fourth floor of a six-storey building nearly 10 hours after it collapsed to the ground.

The Anatolia news agency reported that two men were pulled out from the wreckage of a five-storey building in nearby Duzce, the epicenter of the earthquake.

Witnesses were quoted by the agency as saying that the same building had entombed some 60 people who had gathered for prayers following a burial earlier Friday.