At least 207 people died in Turkey and Syria in a strong earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 in southeastern Turkey in the night from Sunday to Monday. It is feared that the death toll will rise. A large number of buildings in the border area of the two countries collapsed as a result of the quake. Hundreds of people have been injured, the AP news agency reports.
The earthquake’s epicenter was about 33 kilometers northwest of the city of Gaziantep, a provincial capital near the Syrian border, according to the US Geological Survey. The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Agency AFAD designated Pazarcik as the epicenter. The quake occurred at a depth of ten kilometers. A strong 6.7 magnitude aftershock followed about ten minutes later; there were at least six aftershocks in total.
According to Syrian state media, at least 100 people have been killed in Syria. “We fear that the number of deaths is in the hundreds,” a doctor in the northwestern town of Atmed told the AP news agency. At least 130 buildings have collapsed in the Turkish province of Malatya, governor Hulusi Sahin reports. Hundreds of people have been taken to hospitals.
Search and rescue teams were immediately dispatched to the affected areas, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Twitter. “We hope that together we will get through this disaster as quickly as possible with as little damage as possible,” he wrote.
Destroyed buildings
Buildings have also collapsed in the province of Diyarbakir, the television channel HaberTurk reports. On social media, residents of several cities in southeastern Turkey share images of destroyed buildings.
According to Syrian state media, buildings also collapsed in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and in the city of Hama, further south. In the Syrian capital Damascus, the quake shook buildings and people took to the streets. The quake was also felt in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Cyprus, according to social media reports.
Turkey is regularly hit by earthquakes. The country lies on the boundary of several tectonic plates. In 1999, a major earthquake in the northwest of the country killed more than 17,000 people. Two earthquakes in 2020 killed more than 150 people.
This message was updated on Monday at 6:30 AM. The death toll has been adjusted.