Two tremors of magnitude 6.4 and 5.8 rocked Turkey’s Hatay province on Monday, two weeks after the region was devastated by a larger earthquake that killed nearly 45,000 people.
The latest incident caused several damaged buildings to collapse in Antakya, according to HaberTurk TV channel. Families have been left homeless and are hiding in tents taking their children to their cars for safety, while one family told HaberTurk that they recently returned to their second-floor apartment and were forced to flee again.
Turkish disaster and aid agency AFAD measured the first tremor at magnitude 6.4 and the second three minutes later at 5.8.
Rescue work continued in Hatay and one other province on Monday, while the government called off efforts to find survivors in eight other areas affected by the Feb. 6 earthquake, the worst natural disaster in modern Turkish history.
More than 6,000 aftershocks have since rocked southern Turkey and northern Syria.
The death toll has reached 41,156 people in Turkey, AFAD said. In Syria, nearly 4,000 people have been killed, according to the Associated Press.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Hatay earlier
Monday, vowing to “rebuild from scratch”. He said reconstruction
will begin in the region next month, with state building
almost 200,000 new homes