Istanbul February 6 2023: More than 1,300 people were killed and thousands injured on Monday, after a major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck central Turkey and northwest Syria, collapsing buildings and triggering searches for survivors in the rubble.
The quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, was also felt in Cyprus and Lebanon.
“We were shaken like a cradle. There were nine of us at home. Two sons of mine are still in the rubble, I’m waiting for them,” said a woman with a broken arm and wounds on her face, speaking in an ambulance near the wreckage of a seven-storey block where she had lived in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey.
Turkey’s President Erdogan said 912 people had been killed and 5,383 people were injured, as authorities scrambled rescue teams and supply aircraft to the affected area while declaring a “level 4 alarm” that calls for international assistance.
In Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of civil war, a government health official said more than 326 people had been killed and some 1,042 injured, most in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where numerous buildings tumbled down.
The Syrian Civil Defence rescue organisation, also known as the White Helmets, described the situation in the rebel-held region as “disastrous”, adding that entire buildings had collapsed and people were trapped under the rubble. They urged people to evacuate buildings and gather in open areas.
