Two eathquakes have struck Turkey and Syria, killing at least 2,600 people, and leaving thousands more injured. DETAILS: CGreenbank9 9News
Rescuers are now racing against time in extreme weather conditions after the 7.8 magnitude quake toppled some 3000 thousand buildings across south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria, trapping residents under mounds of rubble.
The centre of the tremor was about four kilometres out of Ekinözü to the north-east of the earlier earthquake. The damage and death toll from the latest tremor is unknown.The second jolt in the afternoon caused a multi-story apartment to topple face-forward onto the street in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa, smashing into rubble and raising a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, according to video of the scene.
Nearly 1500 people were killed in 10 Turkish provinces, with some 8500 injured, according to the president of the country's disaster management agency Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria's cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey's Diyarbakir, more than 330km to the northeast.
Such severe damage typically leads to a significant death toll, but bitterly cold temperatures could make matters even worse, reducing the timeframe that rescuers have to save trapped survivors, said Dr Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University in the UK. People and rescue teams try to reach trapped residents inside collapsed buildings in Diyarbakir, Turkey, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023.
Members of urban search and rescue team of Czech firefighters prepares to fly to the earthquake-hit Turkey to help search for people in debris, at Leos Janacek Airport, in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. In Diyarbakir, hundreds of rescue workers and civilians formed lines across a mountain of wreckage, passing down broken concrete pieces, household belongings and other debris as they searched for trapped survivors while excavators dug through the rubble below.
The Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria said the earthquake has caused some damage to the Crusader-built Marqab, or Watchtower Castle, on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. Part of a tower and parts of some walls collapsed. A hospital in Turkey collapsed and patients, including newborns, were evacuated from a handful of facilities in Syria.
On the Syrian side, the swath affected is divided between government-held territory and the country's last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from that conflict. Strained health facilities and hospitals were quickly filled with wounded, rescue workers said. Others had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organisation.
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