ANKARA (Reuters) - The death toll in the Turkish earthquake hit 3,479 at 1200 GMT on Wednesday, the Anatolian news agency said, citing officials at the crisis centre set up to manage the disaster. Tuesday‘s quake measured 7.4 on the Richter scale and centred on the northwestern industrial city of Izmit, some 90 km (55 miles) east of Turkey‘s biggest city, Istanbul. The agency said more than 16,000 people were injured. The death toll was a massive leap from the previous figure of 2,399 announced by the centre. Most of the additional casualty figures came from the province of Kocaeli, where 1,932 deaths are now reported. In Izmit, capital of Kocaeli province, hundreds of apartment blocks collapsed under the force of the quake, crushing residents in their sleep or trapping them under tonnes of rubble. A major fire broke out in an oil refinery in the city. Emergency teams with sniffer dogs, many of them from foreign countries answering a Turkish plea for trained search and rescue specialists, were combing through the wreckage for signs of life. The toll is expected to rise further. Turkey‘s government has declared the earthquake region a disaster zone and closed major highways to private traffic in an effort to reach the area where the power, telephone and road networks were badly damaged by the quake. The European Commission said on Wednesday it would send two million euros ($2.11 million) in emergency humanitarian aid to Turkey following devastating earthquake. The EU executive said the assistance was a preliminary measure to provide „immediate relief supplies to the areas worst affected by the earthquake“. The funds will be managed by the EU‘s humanitarian aid unit ECHO and will be channeled to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent,“ the Commission said in a statement. Further EU assistance was expected to be granted over the next few days. „The need for relief supplies, such as food, medicines, tents, blankets and mobile kitchens etc. will grow over the next few days. ECHO is following the situation closely and is ready to respond with further aid as necessary,“ it added. Foreign rescue teams, firefighters, sniffer dogs and lifting equipment are being sent to northwestern Turkey. Acting European Commission President Manuel Marin sent a condolence message to Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, saying he had been greatly moved and saddened by the disaster and extending his sympathy to the victims‘ families. Hans van den Broek, acting European External Relations Commissioner, also sent a condolence note to Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem and promised help.