Powerful earthquake leaves more than 1,000 killed in Syria and Turkey, triggering international aid
More than 1,200 people have been killed and thousands more 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.
“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.
Mr Erdogan said 912 people had been killed and 5,383 people were injured, as authorities scrambled rescue teams and supply aircraft to the affected area, while declaring a “level 4 alarm” that calls for international assistance.
In Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of civil war, state media said more than 320 people had been killed and some 1,000 injured, most in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where numerous buildings tumbled down.
Turkish state broadcaster RTR showed rescue workers in Osmaniye province using a blanket to carry an injured man out of a collapsed four-storey building and putting him in an ambulance. He was the fifth to be pulled from the rubble, it said.
‘Very tragic’
Footage from the Syrian border town of Azaz — an area held by opposition forces — showed a rescue worker carrying a toddler from a damaged building.
“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 another town about 5 km from the Turkish border.
Homes were “totally destroyed”, said the rescuer on the clip, which showed a street strewn with rubble.
Syrian state television showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. Health officials urged the public to help take the injured to emergency rooms.
“Wounded people are still arriving in waves,” Aleppo’s health director, Ziad Hage Taha, told Reuters by telephone.
Who is offering to help?
India’s government said two teams from its Disaster Response Force comprising 100 personnel with specially trained dog squads and equipment were ready to be flown to the disaster area for search and rescue operations.
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.
European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič said the European Union has activated its emergency Copernicus satellite mapping service to help first responders working on the ground.
Taiwan’s fire department of 130 people, five rescue dogs and 13 tonnes of aid are being prepared to travel to Turkey, awaiting a response from the government to accept its offer.
Russia has prepared 100 members of its emergency rescue team and two aircraft if required, while Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is ready to provide assistance where needed.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has expressed her condolences to those affected in Turkey and Syria.
“The devastation is heartbreaking,” she wrote on Twitter. “Our thoughts are with the families of the victims and those injured.”
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 tremor lasted about a minute and shattered windows, according to a Reuters witness in Diyarbakir, 350 km to the east, where a security official said at least 17 buildings collapsed.
Broadcasters TRT and Haberturk showed footage of people picking through building wreckage, moving stretchers and seeking survivors in the city of Kahramanmaras, where it was still dark.
“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, 460 km 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,” Kerem Kinik, the chief of the 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.
