An injured child waiting to be treated at Bab al-Hawa hospital following an earthquake, in the rebel-held northern countryside of Syria’s Idlib province on the border with Turkey.
Photo: AAREF WATAD
By Mert Ozkan and Ece Toksabay, for Reuters
More than 1000 people have been killed and thousands injured on Monday, when a major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck central Turkey and northwest Syria, collapsing buildings and triggering searches for survivors in the rubble.
The quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, was also felt in Cyprus and Lebanon.
“We were shaken like a cradle. There were nine of us at home. Two sons of mine are still in the rubble, I’m waiting for them,” said a woman with a broken arm and injuries to her face, speaking in an ambulance near the wreckage of a seven-storey block where she had lived in Diyarbakir in Turkey.
“I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I’ve lived,” said Erdem, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicentre, who declined to give his surname.
“We were shaken at least three times very strongly.”
More than 912 people had been killed and more than 5000 people were injured when the quake shook central Turkey, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. While at least 2818 buildings had collapsed.
It was country’s largest disaster since 1939, he said.
Authorities were scrambling rescue teams and supply aircraft for the affected area, and had declared a “level 4 alarm” calling for international assistance.
In Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of civil war, a government health official said more than 237 people had been killed and about 600 injured, most in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where numerous buildings had tumbled down.
In the Syrian rebel-held northwest, rescuers said 147 people had died.
Rescue workers operating in freezing winter weather pulled casualties from rubble across the region.
In this video grab from AFP TV taken on February 6, 2023, rescuers search for victims of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, levelling buildings across several cities and causing damages in neighbouring Syria.
Photo: MAHMUT BOZARSLAN
Reuters TV footage showed dozens of rescue workers in Diyarbakir searching through a mound of debris, all that was left of a big building, hauling off bits of wreckage as they searched for survivors. Occasionally they raised their hands and called for quiet, listening for sounds of life.
In the Haliliye district of Sanliurfa province, footage released by Urfa TV showed what appeared to be a seven-storey block of flats collapsing into a rubble and dust, as passersby ran for safety.
Footage circulated on Twitter showed two neighbouring buildings collapsing, one after the other, in Syria’s Aleppo, filling the street with billowing dust. Two residents of the city, which had been heavily damaged in the war, said the buildings had fallen in the hours after the quake.
‘Like the apocalypse’
Aleppo health director Ziad Hage Taha told Reuters wounded people were “arriving in waves”.
Syrian state television showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet.
Rescuers evacuate a victim from an eight-storey building in Hama, Syria, after the earthquake in Turkey.
Photo: AFP PHOTO / HO / SANA
In the border town of Azaz – an opposition-held area – a rescue worker carried a toddler from a damaged building. Another group carried a body wrapped in a white sheet as a crane pulled away concrete slabs, a Reuters witness said.
“It was like the apocalypse,” said Abdul Salam al Mahmoud, a Syrian living in the opposition-held town of Atareb, contacted by Reuters.
“There was a huge noise and the building next to ours collapsed when the earthquake happened,” said a 30-year-old in Diyarbakir.
“I rushed outside. There was screaming everywhere. I started pulling rocks away with my hands. We pulled out the injured with friends, but the screaming didn’t stop. Then the teams came.”
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoke by telephone with the governors of eight affected provinces to gather information on the situation and rescue efforts, his office said.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad was holding an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss the next steps, his office said.
Damaging M7.8 EQ hit southern Turkey near the Syrian border ~4am local time. PAGER is red for this event; extensive damage is probable. Our hearts go out to those affected. See @Kandilli_info for local info. https://t.co/dMyc6ZVrE1 https://t.co/0OxrznZf1v pic.twitter.com/eco071JqVm
— USGS Earthquakes (@USGS_Quakes) February 6, 2023
People in Damascus, and in the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli, ran into the street and took to their cars to get away from their buildings in fear of collapses, witnesses said.
Footage on broadcaster CNNTurk showed the historic Gaziantep Castle near Turkey’s border with Syria was severely damaged.
An injured child is carried to safety in the town of Jandaris, in the countryside of Syria’s northwestern city of Afrin in the rebel-held part of Aleppo province.
Photo: AFP / Rami al Sayed
International help offered
Governments and international organisations have responded with messages of support, with offers of assistance already made shortly after the quake by Greece, India, Israel, Poland, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the USA.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros said its network of emergency medical teams has been activated to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable affected by the earthquake.
European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič said the EU’s 24/7 Emergency Response Coordination Centre had been in contact with the Turkish authorities and had activated its emergency Copernicus satellite mapping service to help first responders working on the ground.
The United States was “profoundly concerned” about the quake in Turkey and Syria and was monitoring events closely, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said Russia was ready to help Syria and Turkey, both of which it had strong relations with, and had offered assistance to both countries.
Series of earthquakes recorded
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.8 quake struck at a depth of 17.9 km. It reported a series of earthquakes, one of 6.7 magnitude.
The region straddles seismic fault lines.
It was Turkey’s most severe quake since 1999, when one of similar magnitude devastated Izmit and the heavily populated eastern Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, killing more than 17,000.
Monday’s tremor lasted about a minute and shattered windows, according to a Reuters witness in Diyarbakir, 350km to the east, where a security official said at least 17 buildings collapsed.
Here are the first images from Türkiye’s Kahramanmaras province where a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck earlier pic.twitter.com/9ahR2lzTQZ
— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) February 6, 2023
Authorities said 16 structures collapsed in Sanliurfa and 34 in Osmaniye.
“Our primary job is to carry out the search and rescue work and to do that all our teams are on alert,” Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters.
Tremors were also felt in the Turkish capital of Ankara, 460km northwest of the epicentre, and in Cyprus, where police reported no damage.
“The earthquake struck in a region that we feared. There is serious widespread damage,” said Kerem Kinik, chief of the Turkish Red Crescent relief agency, in an appeal for blood donations.
–Reuters
Story Credit: rnz.co.nz