Ankara (EFE).- A series of earthquakes shook southeastern Turkey and several neighboring countries on Monday and has caused the death of at least 237 people in Turkey and more than a hundred in Syria.
This is a first report from the state emergency agency, updated at 3:30 GMT, but rescue work continues in ten provinces and it is feared that the number of victims will be much higher as the day progresses.
So far, the governorate of Sanliurfa province, located southeast of the epicenter, has reported 18 deaths in 19 collapsed buildings, while in Osmaniye, authorities speak of 34 collapsed buildings with at least 7 deaths.
In Malatya, some 130 buildings were destroyed, leaving a hundred injured and 23 dead, in Adiyaman 28 deaths have been recorded so far, to which six deaths are added in Diyarbakir, 250 kilometers east of the epicenter.
There are still no death figures for the two most affected provinces, Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras, nor for Hatay, where numerous citizens report on social networks about landslides and trapped people.
State of alarm
The Turkish Government has decreed a state of alarm, which includes the request for international aid.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has written on his Twitter account: “We hope that we can overcome this catastrophe as soon as possible and with as little damage as possible.”
The main earthquake this morning occurred at 01.17 GMT, with a magnitude of 7.4, at a depth of about 5 kilometers in the province of Kahramanmaras, located in the southeast of Turkey.
He was followed by strong replicas, which affected the provinces of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman, Sanliurfa, Malatya, Kilis, Diyarbakir, Osmaniye, Adana and Hatay.
The affected area extends over more than 500 kilometers in southern Anatolia, where temperatures below zero and snowfall are recorded, making conditions difficult for those who now spend the night outdoors.
This is the largest earthquake recorded in Turkey since the one that occurred in 1999 in Izmit (7.6), which caused thousands of deaths, somewhat larger than that of Van in 2011 (7.2), which caused 600 deaths, and that of Izmir in 2020 (7.0) which caused 115 deaths.
Tragic consequences in Syria
The earthquake has been felt in up to 14 countries, such as Lebanon, Israel or Georgia, but it has been especially damaging in Syria.
At least 111 people have died and another 516 have been injured in the northwestern provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Tartus and Latakia, according to the SANA agency, citing the Ministry of Health, which means that they include the balance in the controlled areas of the country. by Damascus.
The White Helmets, a group of lifeguards that operates in areas under the influence of the opposition, have indicated on their Twitter account that they are helping people trapped under the rubble of buildings collapsed due to the earthquake and speak of “dozens of deaths and hundreds of wounded.”
The northwestern province of Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in the country, and several areas in the Aleppo region are beyond the control of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and are located near the epicenter of the earthquake, so the number of deaths could be much higher than that reported by SANA.
The Syrian Council of Ministers has convened an “emergency” meeting, chaired by Al Asad, to analyze the damage inflicted by the tremor and decide on the measures to be taken.
tsumami alert in italy
The Italian Department of Civil Protection has issued an alert on Monday for possible tsunami waves on its coasts after the earthquake between Turkey and Syria.
As reported by the ANSA agency, the alert has been issued based on data processed by the Tsunami Warning Center (Cat) of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (Ingv) of Italy.
In a statement, Civil Protection “recommends moving away from the coastal areas, approaching the nearby higher areas and following the instructions of the local authorities” Italian.
“The tsunami -explains the Civil Protection note- consists of a series of sea waves produced by the rapid movement of a large mass of water.”
The alert indicates the possibility of a real danger for people who are near the coast, especially in areas that are not very high, or even below sea level, it adds.
