captions by vitac www.vitac.com good morning. good morning. good morning to you, alina. it s monday, october 24th. there s definitely something wrong with my seat. see this? yes, there is. right. christina and carol are off this morning. welcome to american morning. his is a very strange seating situation but we have a lot of news to cover. we will fix that momentarily. a mounting situation in eastern tuck u turkey. a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake, worst to hit the country in a decade killed 260 people, 1,300 hurt and cold temperatures making it hard to find those when the ground began to shake yesterday. diana magnay is with us. reporter: hi, ali. as you shared, freezing temperatures overnight made the search and rescue efforts extremely difficult. we ve just been to hospital across the road and the problem there is, of course, that that building was, it is pretty much impossible to use anymore. they were having to treat all the injured outside y
are reported to have collapsed, including a university dormitory. rescue efforts must compete with frequently strong aftershocks. so far, at least 138 deaths have been confirmed, many more injured. this part of the world is prone to killer earthquakes. a 7.6 quake hit western turkey a dozen years ago. at that time, 17,000 people were killed. cnn crews are now at the site of today s devastating damage. nefsen joins us by phone. can you see anything, or get a s sense of what s going on there? reporter: the situation is not good, as you mentioned, and this is one of the biggest earthquakes in the last 100 years of the turkish history. so one of the eastern cities of turkey, van, was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake about 12 hours ago, and after that, there have been more than 20 aftershocks. each magnitude around 4. so people are really scared. and in central van, there are 10 buildings, maybe, 10 buildings, which are damaged or collapsed, and some of them are state hospitals
candy crowley. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. when the u.s. invaded iraq back in march 2003, few people imagined it was the start of a nightmare that would last almost nine years, cost more than 4,000 american lives, plus hundred of billions of u.s. taxpayer doll lors. the u.s. mission in iraq which had been gradually drawing down will instead come to an abrupt end in just over two months with all american forces out of iraq by year s end. president obama himself announced the end of the iraq war. today, i can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in iraq will come home by the end of the year. after nearly nine years, america s war in iraq will be over. over the next two months, our troops in iraq, tens of thousands of them, will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home. the last american soldier will cross the border out of iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the american people stand unit