Relentlessly, and dramatically, the numbers keep climbing. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake in southern Turkey on Monday, February 6, killed hundreds of people in the country as well as in neighboring Syria, and caused very significant damage.
According to the latest figures released by the Turkish Vice-President, Fuat Oktay, the toll, still provisional, is 284 dead and 2,320 injured. According to him, more than a thousand buildings have completely collapsed, which raises fears of even heavier tolls.
The death toll in government-controlled areas in Syria is 237, with at least 639 injured, according to the Syrian health ministry. Dozens of people have been killed in rebel areas in the north of the country and hundreds more are injured or still under rubble, rescuers said. In a statement, the White Helmets, the rescuers engaged in the rebel areas, declared these regions “disaster” and called on international humanitarian organizations to “intervene quickly” to help the local population.
According to the American seismological institute USGS, the earthquake took place at 4:17 a.m. (2:17 a.m. Paris time), at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers. According to AFAD, the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.4 and a depth of 7 kilometers. The epicenter is located in the district of Pazarcik, in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaras, about 60 kilometers as the crow flies from the Syrian border. Fifty aftershocks were recorded in Turkey, according to AFAD. The tremors were also felt in Lebanon and Cyprus, according to correspondents from Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Civilians trapped under the rubble
This earthquake is the largest in Turkey since the earthquake of August 17, 1999, which caused the death of 17,000 people, including a thousand in Istanbul. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Twitter that “search and rescue teams were immediately dispatched” to quake-affected areas. “We hope that we will get through this disaster together as quickly and with as little damage as possible,” he added.
Buildings have been destroyed in many towns in the southeast of the country, according to images broadcast by Turkish media. On Twitter, Internet users shared the identity and location of people trapped under the rubble in several cities in the south-east of the country. Adana city mayor Zeydan Karalar said two seventeen-story and fourteen-story buildings were destroyed, according to TRT.
“All of our teams are on high alert. We have issued a level four alert. It is a call, including for international help,” Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced on the Habertürk channel. “Our priority is to get people trapped under the ruined buildings out and transfer them to hospitals,” he added.
Italy and Ukraine offer help
France quickly showed its support for Turkey. “After the terrible earthquake that has just struck Turkey and caused so many victims, I expressed to my Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, our sincere condolences, to his country and to the Turkish people, alongside whom France stands “said Catherine Colonna, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, on Twitter.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, “informed by the Civil Protection Department, is constantly monitoring the situation after the destructive earthquake that hit Turkey, on the borders with Syria”, according to a press release from her services. His head of diplomacy, Antonio Tajani, for his part, let it be known on Twitter that he had spoken on the phone with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavusoglu to “tell him of Italy’s support and make available [ its personnel of] civil protection”.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on the same social network that his country was “ready to provide the necessary assistance to overcome the consequences of the disaster”.
Turkey is located in one of the most active seismic zones in the world. At the end of November 2022, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake hit the northwest of the country, injuring around fifty people and causing limited damage, according to the emergency services.
In January 2020, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck the provinces of Elazig and Malatya (East), killing more than 40 people. In October of the same year, a magnitude 7 earthquake in the Aegean Sea left 114 dead and more than 1,000 injured in Turkey.
