Rescuers in Turkey and Syria dug with their bare hands through the freezing night on Tuesday hunting for survivors among the ruins of thousands of buildings collapsed in a series of violent earthquakes.
The number of confirmed deaths in the two countries rose to more than 4 300 after strong tremors near the Turkish-Syrian border, the largest of which was measured at a magnitude of 7.8.
Turkish and Syrian disaster response teams reported more than 5,600 buildings had been leveled in several cities, including many multi-storey apartment blocks filled with sleeping residents when the first quake hit.
In the town of Kahramanmaras, in southeastern Turkey, eyewitnesses struggled to grasp the scale of the disaster.
“We thought it was the end of the world,” said Melisa Salman, a 23-year-old journalist. “This is the first time we’ve experienced anything like this.”
Turkish aid agency AFAD said on Tuesday that there were 2,921 deaths in the country, bringing the confirmed number to 4,365.
There are fears that the number will rise, with World Health Organization officials estimating that up to 20 000 may have died.
In Gaziantep, a Turkish city home to countless refugees from Syria’s decade-long civil war, rescuers picking through the rubble screamed and cried as other buildings collapsed nearby without warning.
The initial earthquake was so large that it reached Greenland and the impact was large enough to cause a global response. Dozens of countries from Ukraine to New Zealand have pledged to send aid, although freezing rain and sub-zero temperatures have slowed responses.
In the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa, rescuers worked through the night to pull survivors from the rubble of a collapsed seven-story building.
“There’s a family I know in the rubble,” said 20-year-old Syrian student Omer El Cuneyd.
“Until 11 o’clock in the afternoon or noon, my friend was still answering the phone. But he didn’t answer again. He’s down there.”
Despite the freezing temperatures outside, terrified residents spent the night on the streets, huddled around fires for warmth.
Mustafa Koyuncu packed his wife and five children into the car, too afraid to move.
“We can’t go home,” the 55-year-old said. “Everybody’s scared.”
Some of the heaviest damage occurred near the epicenter between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, where entire city blocks collapsed under the snow.
‘Apocalypse’
The first quake struck at 4:17 a.m. Monday at a depth of about 18km near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, home to about 2 million people, the US Geological Survey said.
More than 14,000 people have so far been reported injured in Turkey, the disaster management agency said, while Syria said at least 3,411 people were sick.
Officials said three major airports had been shut down, hampering the delivery of vital aid. The blizzard has covered the main roads into the area with ice and snow.
Much of the quake-hit area of northern Syria has been devastated by years of fighting and aerial bombardments by Syrian and Russian forces that have destroyed homes, hospitals and clinics.
The conflict has already shaped an emergency response, with Syria’s UN envoy Bassam Sabbagh appearing to have re-opened border crossings that would have allowed aid to reach areas controlled by rebel groups.
The Syrian health ministry reported damage in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, where Russia has leased naval facilities.
Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo – the commercial center before the Syrian war – often collapsed due to dilapidated infrastructure, which had suffered from a lack of supervision during the war.
Officials cut off gas and electricity supplies in the area as a precaution, as well as closing schools for two weeks.
The UN cultural agency Unesco expressed its fear of heavy damage to two cities on the heritage list – Aleppo in Syria and Diyarbakir in Turkey.
In a jail mostly held by members of the Islamic State group in northwest Syria, inmates mutinied after the quake, with at least 20 escaping, sources at the facility said.
The United States, the European Union and Russia all immediately sent condolences and offered help.
President Joe Biden promised his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the United States would send “any and all” aid that was needed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also offered “necessary assistance” to Turkey, whose combat drones are helping Kyiv fight off the Russian invasion.
Turkey is in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.
The country’s last magnitude 7.8 tremor was in 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern province of Erzincan. Turkey’s Duzce region experienced a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in 1999, when more than 17,000 people died.
Experts have long warned that a major earthquake could destroy Istanbul, a megalopolis of 16 million people full of homes.
© Agence France-Presse