DIYARBAKIR/ANKARA, Turkey, Feb 6: A major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck central Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday, killing about 300 people and injuring hundreds as buildings collapsed across the region, 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.
“I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I’ve lived.
“We were shaken at least three times very strongly, like a baby in a crib,” said Erdem, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicentre, who declined to give his surname.
Turkey’s disaster agency said 76 people had been killed, and 440 hurt, as authorities scrambled rescue teams and supply aircraft to the affected area, while declaring a “level 4 alarm” that calls for international assistance.
A Syrian health official said more than 230 people had been killed and some 600 injured there, most in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where numerous buildings tumbled down.
“The situation is very tragic, tens of buildings have collapsed in the city of Salqin,” a member of the White Helmets rescue organisation said in a video clip on Twitter, referring to a town about 5 km (3 miles) from the Turkish border.
Home were “totally destroyed”, said the rescuer on the clip, which showed a street strewn with rubble. President Bashar al-Assad was holding an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss the next steps, his office said. Many buildings in the region had already suffered damage in fighting during Syria’s nearly 12-year-long civil war.
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 case they collapsed, witnesses said. Turkish Red Crescent relief agency, told Haberturk, issuing an appeal for blood donations.
Turkey is among the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. More than 17,000 people were killed in 1999 when a 7.6-magnitude quake struck Izmit, a city southeast of Istanbul. In 2011, a quake in the eastern city of Van killed more than 500. -TVS
