The biggest earthquake to hit Turkey in more than 80 years has killed more than 1,000 people in the south of the country and along the Syrian border.
The earthquake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, caused massive damage, leveling thousands of buildings and sending people fleeing into the streets. Turkish state media said 912 people were confirmed dead in the quake that struck after 4am local time, while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said thousands more had been injured in 10 Turkish provinces.
Turkey’s initial assessment showed nearly 3,000 buildings were destroyed in the affected area, centered on the Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş, in the south of the country near the Syrian border, and spanning at least 500km. The Turkish government has sent rescue teams, with military and cargo planes bringing supplies to the affected areas – with around 9,000 people working in the effort.
In Syria, more than 237 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in government-held areas, mostly in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo, Tartus and Latakia, according to the country’s deputy health minister. In northwestern Syria, the last pocket of the country still under opposition control, the Syrian Civil Defense said more than 120 civilians had been killed.
The worst-hit parts of Syria are those that have been devastated by a brutal 12-year war that has ravaged the country, left the country in economic ruin, displaced citizens and impoverished millions of people. The UN warned last year that more than 15 million people were in need of humanitarian aid, the most since the beginning of the conflict.
The earthquake caused significant damage to infrastructure, which had been overlooked by airstrikes for years. Syrian TV showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors, with health officials asking the public to help save their neighbors and take them to hospital.
“I thought the room would fall on our heads, the house was shaking so much,” said Munsef Hamoud, an elderly man who lives on the outskirts of Aleppo. “Some houses collapsed in our neighborhood and we heard people screaming from under the rubble.”
The earthquake was felt throughout the region, in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Egypt. In Lebanon, people ran into the streets to escape buildings that were shaken by several powerful aftershocks.
Residents in several Turkish provinces also took to the streets in near-freezing temperatures, rain and snow, according to witnesses. TV footage showed rescue workers digging through rubble in the town of Pazarcık, close to the epicenter. In the southeastern city of Gaziantep, a large part of the 17th-century fortress above the center was destroyed.
Rescuers pulled a child out of the rubble of a collapsed apartment block in the province of Adana, while in the city of Diyarbakir earthmoving equipment cleared mangled steel and concrete as rescue workers went out in search of survivors.
At least 76 aftershocks rocked the region, with the strongest measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, disaster relief officials said. Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said the country is ready to receive international aid.
In northwestern Syria’s Idlib province, “hundreds of families” are still trapped in the rubble, according to the Syrian Civil Defense. The region, controlled by the Islamist movement and one of the last enclaves for the Syrian opposition, is home to about 4.6 million people, the majority in need of humanitarian aid, according to UN data.
Many people were displaced from other parts of the country during the Syrian civil war. So, some live in informal settlements on the outskirts of the city, in open fields and in abandoned buildings, burned or leveled by airstrikes. Much of the medical infrastructure in the area has been damaged during the war after hospitals were targeted.
A video published by the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports 36 medical facilities in the northwest, shows a chaotic emergency room at a hospital in Aleppo.
“Our hospital is overwhelmed with patients filling the hallways,” a statement from the group said. Several of the group’s hospitals suffered “severe damage” including in Idlib, where newborns were evacuated to nearby facilities that are still operating.
Turkey is crossed by fault lines and small tremors occur almost every day. Monday’s earthquake was the largest to hit the country since 1939. A major earthquake, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck Istanbul and surrounding provinces in 1999, killing more than 17,000 people.
Seismologists have blamed a lack of building code enforcement for the high death rate in Turkey’s disaster. Last year, the city and environment minister said the country’s housing stock included 6.8 million homes that were “at risk” in the event of an earthquake.