catastrophe |
More than a thousand people died in violent earthquakes in the Turkish-Syrian border area. The first aid measures are currently underway – Germany has also announced support.
After the tremors of the early morning, another severe earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 recently shook southeast Turkey. The epicenter was in the province of Kahramanmaras, reported the earthquake station Kandilli in Istanbul. The earth also trembled in Syria and Lebanon. The total number of reported deaths is now more than 1,400. At least 900 people died in Turkey alone. More than 5,300 people were injured, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Around 2,400 people have been rescued from the rubble so far. Weather conditions made rescue work difficult, Erdogan said. The affected provinces are currently below zero, and it is snowing in some areas.
Sub-zero temperatures complicate the rescue work
In Syria, the death toll rose to more than 500 dead. Around 1,600 people were injured, reported Deputy Health Minister Ahmed Dhamirijeh and the White Helmets rescue organization.
“Whole families are still buried and the rescue workers from the White Helmets can’t get to the buried people at the moment,” reports reporter Omar Albam for Deutsche Welle. Alban is currently in Sarmada, 30 kilometers north of the Syrian city of Idlib. There was a lack of technical equipment to rescue people who were still alive in several places at the same time and to clear away the rubble. According to Albam, the quake almost leveled the small town of Sarmada to the ground.
Salvage operations in the small town of Sarmada in Syria
The first earthquake with an epicenter also in the province of Kahramanmaras shook southeast Turkey on Monday morning. The Turkish disaster service Afad corrected the strength from 7.4 to 7.7 at noon.
Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu told CNN Türk that the provinces in the south-east of the country were particularly affected. buildings had collapsed. Rescue teams from across the country would be pulled together. Soylu asked for international help.
Destroyed buildings in Syrian Asmarin in the Idlib region
The first quake was felt in ten provinces, said Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay. Residential buildings and a hospital in the city of Iskenderun were among the collapsed buildings.
Several airports in regions of Turkey particularly affected by the earthquake remained closed to civil flights for the time being. This is regarding the airports in Hatay, Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, according to Oktay.
According to the state news agency Anadolu, the castle in the city of Gaziantep was also badly damaged. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Because of the communication bottlenecks, people in Turkey were called upon to make phone calls online and not via the cell phone network, so that buried people can be reached first. The temperatures in the affected areas are currently often in the minus range. In some places it snowed heavily.
The Turkish Crescent calls for blood donations
The state broadcaster TRT showed how people were freed from the rubble in the snow in the city of Iskenderun. Pictures were also shown from the cities of Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Osmaniye, Diyarbakir and Adana, in which people were being transported away, some wrapped in blankets. The Turkish crescent called on the population to donate blood.
An image of the destruction from the city of Malatya
Also in Syria According to the Sana news agency, buildings collapsed in numerous cities. Photos showed rescue teams carrying people away on stretchers. The head of the National Earthquake Center, Raed Ahmed, said this was the strongest tremor to hit Syria since 1995, according to Sana.
Federal government announces help
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) expressed their dismay. “We mourn with the relatives and fear for the buried,” wrote Scholz on Twitter. “Germany will of course send help,” he added.
“My thoughts are with the families of the victims of these terrible earthquakes and everyone who fears for their families, friends and neighbors,” Baerbock tweeted. “We will quickly get help with our partners.”
Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) and other representatives of the SPD, Greens, FDP, CDU/CSU and Left Party also expressed their dismay.
Destroyed buildings in Turkey’s Diyarbakir – at least 1700 buildings collapsed in Turkey
EU coordinates deployment of rescue workers
The EU Center for Disaster Relief coordinates the deployment of European rescue workers to Turkey. The first teams from the Netherlands and Romania are already on their way, said the responsible EU Commissioner Janez Lenarcic in Brussels.
The Slovenian also confirmed that the EU civil protection procedure had been started. According to the Commission, it aims, among other things, to strengthen cooperation between the EU member states and the other participating states and to improve the reaction to disasters.
Memories of 1999 are awakened
Turkey is located in one of the world’s most active seismic regions. Two of the largest continental plates meet there: the African and the Eurasian. In 1999, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck northwest Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people.
nob/gri (dpa, afp, rtr, ap)