A man, aged 70, was pulled from the rubble alive after being buried for 33 hours but hope of finding more survivors from the earthquake that struck Turkey's Aegean coast and the Greek island of Samos, was dwindling, with the confirmed death toll rising to 69. 

The man, identified as Ahmet Citim, was rescued from the collapsed residential "Riza Bey" building. He was cheered as he was brought out and taken away to hospital.

"I never lost hope," he told Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca who visited him in hospital. 

The 7.0-magnitude quake injured 949 people, the Turkish emergency authority AFAD said, after it struck Friday afternoon near the west coast town of Seferihisar in Izmir province. The tremor triggered a small tsunami in the district of Seferihisar and on Samos.

More than 220 people are being treated in hospital, AFAD said.

The search and rescue mission in its third day appears now to be finding more bodies than survivors and it is a hazardous task in the unstable debris. Teams have been focusing on eight toppled buildings, but work was paused at one when authorities determined the damaged structure next door was also at risk of falling.

In Bayrakli anxious families in thick blankets had spent a second night in tents.

Turkey has reported more than 800 aftershocks following the quake, including 40 that were above four in magnitude.

Officials said 20 buildings were destroyed in Bayrakli which was in the process of urban transformation due to lack of earthquake resistance.

Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Sunday that nearly 300 buildings were damaged although most were only lightly affected. He stated that 26 of them would be demolished.

"It's not the earthquake that kills but buildings," he added, repeating a common slogan.

A 73-year-old survivor from one of the collapsed buildings said she was on her third-floor balcony when the quake struck and believes there were at least 50 people in the block, which also had a café on the bottom floor.

"In the first tremor nothing happened. During the second tremor, the seventh floor, sixth and fourth floors fell on top of another like a sandwich," Suzan Dere told AP. "The building collapsed in a cloud of dust onto the street with a very loud noise. It all happened within one minute."

More than 6,400 rescuers have been working all day and all night since Friday, mechanical diggers helping them remove blocks of concrete.

Periodically, the rescue work has been halted and everyone kept silent to listen for any sign of someone trapped in the rubble.

"It will be a miracle if they are found alive," a woman waiting to hear news of a family friend was overheard telling another, reported AFP.

Thousands of tents have been set up in the area with residents warned to avoid returning to their homes.

Early on Saturday, teenager Inci Okan was lifted out of the rubble of a devastated eight-floor apartment block in Izmir's Bayrakli district. Her dog, Fistik, was also rescued, Sozcu newspaper reported. Friends and relatives waited outside the building for news of loved ones still trapped inside, including employees of a dental clinic that was located on the ground floor.

Turkish Health Minister Koca and National Medical Rescue Team (UMKE) member Edanur Dogan later visited Okan at hospital.

Emergency worker Dogan had held the girl's hand while rescue teams removed the debris above her.

"I am very happy. Thankfully my father was not at home. My father couldn't fit there. He would have hurt his head. I am tiny. I am short so I squeezed in and that's how I was rescued. We stayed home with my dog. Both of us are well," Okan said from her hospital bed.

Okan promised to play the violin for Dogan after being discharged from hospital.

"I will play the violin for you, I promise," she said.

In another collapsed building, rescuers made contact with a 38-year-old woman and her four children - aged 3, 7 and 10-year old twins - and worked to clear a corridor to bring them out, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The woman and three of her children were brought out, although one of the children later died of their injuries. Efforts continue to free the fourth child.

The mayor of the Aegean port city said on Saturday that in total at that time, around 180 people remained trapped.

"In the meantime, we are delighted to be hearing miracles happening as a result of diligent work by rescue teams," Mayor Tunc Soyer told television channel Fox TV.

A total of 100 people have been rescued since the earthquake, Murat Kurum, the environment and urban planning minister, told reporters.

Two teenagers were killed on Samos after being struck by a collapsing wall. At least 19 people were injured on the island, with two, including a 14-year-old, being airlifted to Athens and seven hospitalized on the island. 

The earthquake, which the Istanbul-based Kandilli Institute said had a magnitude of 6.9, was centered in the Aegean northeast of Samos. AFAD said it measured 6.6 and hit at a depth of some 16 kilometers (10 miles).

Turkey is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed some 18,000 people in northwestern Turkey. Earthquakes are frequent in Greece as well.

In a show of solidarity rare in recent months of tense bilateral relations, Greek and Turkish government officials issued mutual messages of solidarity, while the country's respective leaders held a telephone conversation.