Hundreds killed and injured in Turkey and Syria as a result of an earthquake of magnitude 7.8
Turkey and Syria were hit by one of the strongest earthquakes in memory in the area, one of the strongest seismic events in the world. Hundreds of people died, 284 so far in Turkey and 235 in Syria, many in their sleep, in the two countries in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake, the largest in a century. Thousands have been injured and missing in an area home to millions of refugees. It can be foreseen that the balance will increase hour by hour. Turkey and Syria have asked for international rescue assistance. The United States and Great Britain offered their help.
The earthquake struck at 04:17 local time (01:17 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 km near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, home to about two million people, according to the US Geological Survey. The main earthquake was followed by up to 40 aftershocks, which were noted in Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus and Greece.
Turkish television footage shows shocked people standing in the snow, dressed in pajamas, as rescuers dig through the rubble of collapsed houses. Buildings were demolished while many rested, reports Guardian. In Turkey alone, about 17,000 buildings were destroyed. The cold makes rescue work difficult.
Entire neighborhoods were destroyed in the city of Kahramanmaras and in neighboring Gaziantep. Entire houses also collapsed in the cities of Adiyaman, Malatya and Diyarbakir, where people ran into the streets in panic. Residents of the almost destroyed city of Pazardzhik said they were afraid for people trapped under fallen buildings.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a pivotal election in May, said search and rescue teams were immediately dispatched to the affected areas. “We hope to get through this together as soon as possible and with as little damage as possible, and we continue our work,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
Turkey is in one of the most active seismic zones in the world, with land bordering the Anatolian fault in the north of the country, where very destructive tremors are recorded. Izmit and the surroundings of Kocaeli, near Istanbul, were hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in 1999 that killed 17,000 people, 1,000 of them in Istanbul.
Aleppo, Hama, Idlib and Latakia
In Syria, the damage is also huge. The quake has shaken opposition-controlled regions, which are home to some four million people displaced from other parts of Syria as a result of the country’s protracted civil war. Many of them lived in houses that had already been destroyed by shelling.
A spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Health indicated that the balance, which is preliminary, includes casualties from various cities such as Aleppo in the north of the country; Hama, 140 km south of the capital; or Latakia, to the west, according to what the Sana news agency has learned. Idlib also suffered. This catastrophe is now joining the devastation of the war.
In addition, a general contingency and supply plan was implemented in the affected areas, and medical teams, including ambulances and mobile clinics, were dispatched from various regions.
The country’s authorities indicated that several dozen residential buildings located in various neighborhoods collapsed as a result of earthquakes.
On the other hand, the director general of the National Seismic Center, Raed Ahmed, explained to Sana that this earthquake is “the strongest” since 1995, when the national seismic monitoring network was installed.
Earthquake in southeast Turkey
Earthquake in southeast Turkey
Earthquake in southeast Turkey
Earthquake in southeast Turkey
Source: El Independiente