- Author, Writing
- Role, BBC News World
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Entire buildings collapsed in the earthquake.
At least 5,000 people are believed to have died following the two earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria.
In Turkey, the death toll from these earthquakes stands at 3,381, according to the country’s disaster management authority.
Orhan Tatar, an official with the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), said another 20,426 people were injured and 5,775 buildings collapsed.
This new toll brings the total death toll in Turkey and neighboring Syria to more than 5,000.
Many buildings have collapsed and rescue teams are searching for survivors in large piles of rubble.
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Rescue teams search for possible survivors under the collapsed buildings.
Turkey is one of the most active seismic zones in the world.
Several experts have pointed out that this earthquake is the strongest recorded by specialized observatories since 1939, when an earthquake of the same magnitude struck Turkey and killed more than 30,000 people.
But it was not the only one. In 1999, an earthquake hit the northwest of the country and killed more than 17,000 people.
The earthquake occurs in a particularly critical area due to the number of refugees living there.
Turkey is the country with the highest number of refugees in the world with nearly three million, most of them fleeing the bloody civil war in Syria.
The Israeli government was one of the first to speak out regarding the emergency situation in Turkey and announced the dispatch of humanitarian aid and personnel to assist in the rescue efforts.
“I have never felt anything like this before”
A BBC Turkish Service reporter in Diyarbakir reported that a shopping center in the city collapsed.
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The earthquake was also felt in Lebanon and Cyprus.
“I was writing something and suddenly the whole building started shaking and yeah, I didn’t really know what to feel,” Mohamad El Chamaa, a student from Beirut, told the BBC. capital of Lebanon.
“I was right next to the window and I was afraid it would break. It lasted four to five minutes and it was pretty awful,” he added.
Rushdi Abualouf, a BBC producer in the Gaza Strip, said he felt the tremor for regarding 45 seconds in the house where he was.
Meanwhile, a man has told the BBC he was convinced his family was going to die when the earthquake rocked his fifth-floor apartment in the southern Turkish city of Adana.
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Rescuers pull out a child who was trapped in the rubble.
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Hundreds of buildings have collapsed across large parts of Turkey and Syria.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life. We moved for almost a minute,” explained Nilüfer Aslan.
Aslan noted that he called his relatives in other rooms.
I told them: “There is an earthquake, at least let us die together in the same place.” …. That’s the only thing that came to mind.”
When the earthquake stopped, Aslan rushed outside – “I mightn’t take anything, I stayed outside in my slippers” – and found that four buildings surrounding his had collapsed.
Another man in Pazarcık, a town in southern Turkey close to the epicenter, said his family woke up with strong shaking and were waiting for dawn, in the middle of a very cold night, to inspect the damage.
“There are buildings destroyed all around me, there are houses on fire. There are buildings cracking. A building collapsed just 200 meters from where I am now,” said Nihat Altundağ, in a Guardian report.
“People are all out, all in fear.”
Hours of uncertainty were also experienced in Syria in the followingmath of the powerful earthquake.
Several residents of the northern region of the country described their fear and confusion during the earthquake.
“Paintings fell from the walls of the house,” Samer, a resident of the Syrian capital, Damascus, told Archyde.com news agency.
“I woke up terrified. Now we’re all dressed and standing outside the door.”
