Turkey, Shadow News —
At least 2,300 people have died and rescuers are racing to pull survivors from beneath the rubble after a devastating earthquake ripped through Turkey and Syria, leaving destruction and debris on each side of the border.
One of the strongest earthquakes to hit the region in a century shook residents from their beds early in the morning on Monday, sending tremors as far away as Lebanon and Israel.
In Turkey, at least 1,498 people have died and several thousand were injured, according to the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD).
In neighboring Syria, at least 820 have died. According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, 430 people have died across government-controlled areas, mostly in the regions of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia, and Tartus. The “White Helmets” group, officially known as the Syria Civil Defense, reported 390 deaths in opposition-controlled areas. Much of northwestern Syria, which borders Turkey, is controlled by anti-government forces amid a bloody civil war that began in 2011.
The epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude quake was 23 kilometers east of Nurdagi, in Turkey’s Gaziantep province, at a depth of 24.1 kilometers, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
A series of aftershocks have reverberated throughout the day. The largest, a major quake that measured 7.5 in magnitude, struck in Turkey, according to the USGS about nine hours after the initial quake. That aftershock hit around 95 kilometers north of the original.
Video from the scene in Turkey showed day breaking over rows of collapsed buildings, some with apartments exposed to the elements as people huddled in the freezing cold beside them, waiting for help.
A host of countries have sent rescue workers to help the stricken region, where a colossal effort to find and free trapped civilians is underway. A cold and wet weather system is moving through the region, further hampering that challenge.
Monday’s quake is believed to be the strongest to hit Turkey since 1939, when an earthquake of the same magnitude killed 30,000 people, according to the USGS. Earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, with fewer than five occurring each year on average, anywhere in the world. Seven quakes with magnitude 7.0 or greater have struck Turkey in the past 25 years – but Monday’s is the most powerful.
Search and rescue teams have been dispatched to the south of the country, Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said. AFAD, the disaster agency, said it had requested international help through the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), the European Union’s humanitarian program.
Nearly 1,000 search and rescue volunteers have been deployed from Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, along with dogs, trucks and aid, according to its governor, Ali Yerlikaya.
The World Health Organization has activated its network of emergency medical teams in the two countries to assist those affected by the earthquake, the organization’s director-general tweeted. Erdogan also said in his televised address that NATO, the European Union and dozens of other countries had offered to help.
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