More than 1,300 people were killed and over 6,530 others injured in Turkey and Syria after a massive earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale struck a wide area near the two countries’ border, according to authorities.
Earlier Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the death toll now stood at 912, while the number of injured had increased to 5,383, reports the BBC.
Earlier, Vice President Fuat Oktay had said that more than 1,700 buildings were damaged and at least 78 successive earthquakes were recorded following the initial tremor with a maximum magnitude of 6.6, reports Xinhua news agency.
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The powerful quake that occurred at 4.17 a.m. at a depth of 17.9 km near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, was felt in Lebanon and Cyprus. The epicenter of the quake was in the Pazarcik district of Kahramanmaras province.
According to Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, 10 cities were the worst affected — Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Osmaniye, Adiyaman, Malatya, Sanliurfa, Adana, Diyarbakir, and Kilis.
In Gaziantep, at least 80 people were killed, while 70 died in Kahramanmaras. In Malatya province, northeast of Gaziantep, at least 47 people were killed, while in Sanliurfa, to the east, there were 18 deaths.
Other deaths were reported in various places including Diyarbakir and Osmaniye. In Syria, more than 470 people lost their lives and nearly 1,000 others were injured.
In a statement, the Syrian Health Ministry said that of the overall fatalities, 239 were reported from Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, and Tartus provinces.
The White Helmets rescue group, which operates in rebel-controlled areas of north-western Syria, said on Twitter that at least 147 people had died there.
Rescue operations are currently underway amid massive damages in the affected areas. The Syrian Ministry of Defence has put all its units on high alert to help the people directly affected by the earthquake and rescue those still stuck under the rubble.
In the wake, if the quake, the Transport Ministry suspended trains on all routes as a precautionary measure. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency meeting with his cabinet to discuss the repercussions of the earthquake.
The devastating temblor came as the region was under a snowstorm expected to continue until Thursday.
As a result of the quake, an explosion occurred on a gas pipeline in Turkey’s southern province of Hatay. The state-owned energy company BOTAS has suspended natural gas flow to the southern Gaziantep, Hatay, and Kahramanmaras provinces.
Monday’s earthquake is believed to be the strongest in Turkey since the magnitude 7.9 temblor that hit eastern Erzincan province in 1939, which killed 33,000 people.
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