A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked wide swaths of Turkey and Syria early Monday morning, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,300 people. Hundreds were believed to remain trapped under the rubble, with the death toll expected to rise as rescuers searched for piles of rubble in area cities and towns.
On both sides of the border, residents awakened by the quake before dawn ran outside on a cold, rainy and snowy night. Buildings were reduced to heaps of cracked floors as major aftershocks continued, some nearly as strong as the first.
Rescuers and residents in several cities searched for survivors, working through tangles of metal and concrete. A hospital in Turkey has collapsed and patients, including newborns, have been evacuated from the facility in Syria.
In the Turkish city of Adana, a resident said three buildings collapsed near his home. “I have no strength anymore,” a survivor could be heard screaming from under the rubble as rescuers tried to reach him, said the resident, a journalism student Muhammet Fatih Yavus.
“As rubble removal efforts continue at many buildings in the earthquake zone, we do not know how much the number of deaths and injuries will increase,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “Hopefully, we will put these disastrous days behind us in unity and solidarity as a country and a nation.”
The quake, which was centered north of the capital of Turkey’s Gaziantep province, was felt as far away as Cairo. He sent Damascus residents out into the streets and woke up people in their beds in Beirut.
It struck a region that has been shaped on both sides of the border by more than a decade of civil war in Syria. On the Syrian side, the affected strip is divided between government-controlled territory and the last opposition-controlled enclave of the country, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, for its part, hosts millions of refugees from that conflict.
Opposition-controlled regions in Syria are teeming with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the fighting. Many of them live in buildings that have already been destroyed by previous shelling. Hundreds of families were trapped in the rubble, the opposition emergency organization, called the White Helmets, said in a statement.
Overburdened health facilities and hospitals quickly filled with the wounded, rescue teams said. Others had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organization.
The region sits on major fault lines and is frequently rocked by earthquakes. Some 18,000 people were killed in an equally powerful quake that struck northwestern Turkey in 1999. The US Geological Survey measured Monday’s quake at 7.8. At least 20 aftershocks followed, authorities said, including a 7.5.
Thousands of buildings were reported to have collapsed in a wide area stretching from the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Hama to Diyarbakir in Turkey, more than 330 kilometers (200 miles) to the northeast. A hospital collapsed in the Mediterranean coastal town of Iskenderun, but the victims were not immediately known, said its vice president, Fuat Oktay.
Television stations in Turkey broadcast screens divided into four or five, showing live coverage of the rescue efforts in the hardest-hit provinces. In the town of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, while others tried to reach a relative.
Offers of help, from search and rescue teams to medical supplies and money, came from dozens of countries, as well as from the European Union and NATO.
Damage evident in photographs of affected areas is generally associated with significant loss of life, while extremely cold temperatures and the difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war will only complicate rescue efforts, Dr. Steven said. Godby, a natural resource expert. dangers at Nottingham Trent University.
In Turkey, people trying to leave earthquake-affected regions caused traffic jams, hampering the efforts of emergency teams trying to reach the affected areas. Authorities urged residents not to take to the roads. Mosques have been opened around the region to provide shelter for people unable to return to their damaged homes amid freezing temperatures.
The quake severely damaged Gaziantep’s most famous landmark, its historic hilltop castle in the center of the city. Parts of the fortress walls and watchtowers were leveled and other parts badly damaged, pictures from the city showed.
In Diyarbakir, hundreds of rescue workers and civilians lined up through a mountain of rubble, passing broken pieces of concrete, household items and other debris as they searched for trapped survivors as bulldozers dug through the rubble.
In northwestern Syria, the quake added new problems to the opposition-controlled enclave centered on Idlib province, which has been under siege for years, with frequent Russian and government airstrikes. The territory is dependent on a flow of aid from nearby Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.
The opposition Syrian Civil Defense described the situation there as “disastrous”.
Osama Abdelhamid, who was being treated for injuries at an Idlib hospital, said most of his neighbors were killed. He said their shared four-story building collapsed just as he, his wife and his three children were running for the exit. A wooden door fell on them and acted as a shield.
“I was born again, thank God,” he said.
In the small, rebel-held Syrian town of Azmarin in the mountains next to the Turkish border, the bodies of several dead children, wrapped in blankets, were brought to a hospital.
The General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in Syira said the earthquake has caused some damage to the Marqab, or Watchtower Castle, built by the Crusaders, on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. Part of a tower and parts of some walls collapsed.
The USGS said the quake was centered about 20 miles (33 kilometers) from Gaziantep. It was 18 kilometers (11 miles) deep.
More than 900 people were killed in 10 Turkish provinces, with more than 5,400 injured, according to Turkey’s president. The death toll in Syria’s government-controlled areas exceeded 330 people, with some 1,000 injured, according to the Health Ministry. In rebel-held areas, more than 200 people were killed, according to the White Helmets, although the SAMS medical organization put the death toll at more than 135; both said hundreds were injured.
Huseyin Yayman, a lawmaker from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several members of his family were trapped under the rubble of their collapsed houses.
“There are so many other people who are also trapped,” he told HaberTurk television by phone. “There are so many buildings that have been damaged. The people are in the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.
