A 10-storey apartment block collapsed in Turkey

As many as 120 people may have been in the building in the town of Selcuklu, some 250 km south of Ankara, private news channel NTV said. Shops on the ground floor were closed for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha when the building collapsed.

"Some of the families had visitors over to celebrate the holiday, others had gone away, so it’s hard to say how many people were inside," Mustafa Torosoglu, who lived in the building, told NTV.

At least 13 people were taken to hospital, a police official said, and state-run news agency Anatolian said some suffered injuries after jumping out of their apartment windows as the block crumbled into a five-metre pile.

Authorities were investigating whether an explosion in the central heating system or faulty construction work had caused the collapse, Anatolian said.

"It’s still not clear what caused the building to collapse. Initial reports were that the furnace had exploded, but statements from…officials show the building may have collapsed due to an error in its construction," Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu told NTV.

Witnesses reported the sound of an explosion before the building came crashing down.

Similar disasters have in the past been blamed on Turkey’s poorly enforced building regulations and shoddy construction.

A derelict wooden house collapsed in central Istanbul on Saturday, killing six people, while 10 students died in June when the dormitory of a Muslim religious college collapsed.