More than a thousand rescuers, including six battalions of soldiers, and residents were digging for survivors underneath collapsed apartment buildings in eastern Turkey, where a powerful quake struck Sunday afternoon instantly killing 138 and injuring 350 people.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and six ministers were also in Van province on Monday to see the death and devastation caused by the earthquake that the US Geological Survey (USGS) measured at 7.2 magnitude.

Helicopter ambulances ferried victims to hospitals in other cities while C-130 military cargo planes brought tents, food and medicines to the Van airport for distribution to the disaster zone. Tent hospitals were set up in Ercis and a crisis center was put up in the capital Ankara.

The earthquake struck at 1041 GMT with the epicenter located in Tabanli, according to Turkey's Kandili institute. Several aftershocks followed with two strong ones striking the villages of Ilikaynak and Gedikbulak.

The earthquake was felt in Iran as Van is near the Iranian border.

The initial death toll in Ercis district is 45 with 55 buildings toppled.

The earthquake was the strongest to hit the country in more than a decade. In 1999, a magnitude 7.6 temblor devastated Izmit and killed 17,000 people there while a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Duzce killed 894 people, according to the USGS.