A strong 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Turkey and northwestern Syria on Monday, killing nearly 600 people and injuring hundreds as buildings collapsed across the region, prompting a search for survivors among the rubble.
"It shook us like a cradle. There were nine of us at home. Two of my children are still in the rubble, I'm waiting for them," said a woman with a broken arm and facial injuries as she spoke to an ambulance near the remains of the seven block. plants where he lived in Diyarbakir.
"I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years that I have lived," said Erdem, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake's epicenter, who did not want to give his last name. "He shook us at least three times with great force."
Turkey's Vice President Fuat Oktay said 284 people had been killed and 2,323 injured as authorities sent rescue teams and supply planes to the affected area, declaring "alarm level 4," which requires international aid.
The provisional balance also records 1,710 collapsed buildings in ten provinces in southeastern Anatolia, with Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras as the most seriously affected. In Gaziantep, the industrial economic center of southern Anatolia, there were at least 80 deaths, and in neighboring Kahramanmaras, where 300 buildings collapsed, there are currently 70, Oktay said at a press conference.
In Syria, already ravaged by more than 11 years of civil war, a government health official said more than 237 people had been killed and some 600 wounded, mostly in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where collapsed numerous buildings.
In addition, in the Syrian northwest, controlled by the rebels, the earthquake has left more than 147 dead, according to AFP citing rescue services.
Turkey's state broadcaster RTR showed rescuers in Osmaniye province using a blanket to pull an injured man out of a collapsed four-story building and into an ambulance. This is the fifth wounded to be pulled from the rubble.
Images from CNNTurk showed that the historic Gaziantep castle had suffered extensive damage.
President Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone with the governors of eight affected provinces to gather information about the situation and the rescue efforts, his office said in a statement.
Footage from the Syrian border town of Azaz - an area controlled by opposition forces - showed a rescue worker pulling a small child out of a damaged building.
"The situation is very tragic, dozens of buildings have collapsed in the city of Salqin," a member of the White Helmets rescue organization said in a video clip on Twitter, referring to another city some 5 km (3 miles) away. from the Turkish border. The houses were "totally destroyed," the rescuer said in the clip, which showed a rubble-strewn street.
President Bashar al-Assad was holding an emergency cabinet meeting to survey the damage and discuss next steps, his office reported.
Syrian state television showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. The health authorities urged the population to help transfer the injured to the emergency services. "The wounded keep arriving in waves," Aleppo's health director Ziad Hage Taha told Reuters by telephone.
The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo published photos of stone blocks that had collapsed on its mezzanine.
In nearby rural areas, rescuers pulled a bloodied and crying baby from a collapsed building, while in the town of Azaz, a crane lifted concrete slabs as rescuers carried away a body wrapped in a sheet. . Many buildings in the region had already been damaged in fighting during the nearly 12-year civil war.
Residents of Damascus and the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli ran out into the streets and got into their cars to get away from their buildings in case they collapsed, according to witnesses.
The Syrian National Seismological Center reported that a 4.6 - magnitude aftershock has struck the north of the country hours after the devastating earthquake centered in Turkey .
The United States was "deeply concerned" by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and was closely following developments, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter. "I have been in contact with Turkish officials to let them know that we are willing to provide all the necessary help," he said.
The US Geological Survey reported that the magnitude 7.8 quake occurred at a depth of 17.9 km. It reported a series of earthquakes, one of them measuring 6.7 magnitude. The region runs along seismic faults.
For its part, Russia has prepared two Il-76 planes to transport Russian rescuers to Turkey so that they can assist this country in search and rescue of the victims of the series of earthquakes that shook the Turkish southeast. "Two Russian Emergencies Ministry Il-76 planes with rescuers on board are ready to fly to Turkey," the ministry led by Alexandr Kurenkov said on its Telegram channel.
Preparations to assist Turkey come after Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "the necessary help" to alleviate the effects of the earthquake.
The European Union also announced on Monday the dispatch of rescue teams and is preparing more aid for Turkey after the strong earthquake, according to the EU executive's Crisis Management Commissioner. "Teams from the Netherlands and Romania are already on their way," commissioner Janez Lenarcic said on Twitter.
Lenarcic said that the EU activated its Civil Protection Mechanism to respond to the earthquake, which also affected Syria, since it occurred near the border between the two countries.
Several EU governments offered assistance, including France and Germany. Belgium, Poland, Spain and Finland also said they were ready to deploy rescue teams and provide assistance.
The Spanish Government has activated the sending of urgent aid to Turkey and Syria to participate in the search and rescue of victims after the earthquake that this morning has shaken both countries. This has been advanced by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in a message on social networks, in which he has expressed his solidarity with Turkey and Syria "in the face of one of the biggest earthquakes in their history".
It is the most serious earthquake to hit Turkey since 1999, when a tremor of similar magnitude devastated Izmit and the densely populated eastern Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, killing more than 17,000 people.
The tremor lasted about a minute and broke windows, according to a Reuters witness in Diyarbakir, 350km to the east, where a security official said at least 17 buildings had collapsed.
Authorities said 16 structures collapsed in Sanliurfa and 34 in Osmaniye.
The television networks TRT and Haberturk showed images of people collecting debris from buildings, carrying stretchers and searching for survivors in the city of Kahramanmaras, where it was still dark.
"Our main job is to carry out search and rescue work and for this all our teams are on alert," Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters.
Tremors were also felt in the Turkish capital Ankara, 460 km northwest of the epicenter, and in Cyprus, where police reported no damage.
"The earthquake has occurred in a region that we feared. There is severe widespread damage," Kerem Kinik, head of the Turkish Red Crescent aid agency, told Haberturk, calling for blood donations.
Turkey is one of the countries in the world most prone to earthquakes. More than 17,000 people died in 1999 when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Izmit, a city southeast of Istanbul. In 2011, an earthquake in the eastern city of Van caused more than 500 deaths.
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