Two powerful earthquakes, one measuring 7.8 magnitude and the other 7.5 magnitude, shook wide swaths of Turkey and Syria early Monday, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing at least 20,451 people.
TOLL OF DEATHS AND INJURIES IN TURKEY
According to the latest figures confirmed by NBC NewsIn Turkey, 17,134 people have died, in addition to 70,347 injuries.
DEATH TOLL AND INJURED IN SYRIA
In the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, 1,347 people have died and there were at least 22,085 injured.
In Syrian rebel territories 1,970 people have been killed and 2,950 injured.
In total, 3,317 people have been killed in Syria.
The number of buildings that completely collapsed reached 418 buildings, and those that partially collapsed amounted to more than 1,300, and thousands of buildings that cracked in northwestern Syria.
More than 11,000 people lost their lives.
Hundreds were believed to remain trapped under the rubble, and the death toll was expected to rise on both sides of the border as rescuers searched for piles of rubble in cities and towns in the region.
They rescued alive a young man who was buried under rubble for 26 hours in Idlib, and a child in the city of Aleppo, Syria.
THE WORST EARTHQUAKE IN TURKEY SINCE 1939
The early-morning 7.8-magnitude temblor was centered regarding 20 miles from Gaziantep, a major city and provincial capital of Turkey located regarding 60 miles from the Syrian border. The quake was felt in Cairo, Egypt.
The first quake was Turkey’s biggest disaster since 1939, according to President Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is located in a zone of large seismic faults and registers frequent earthquakes. Some 18,000 people died in 1999 in a series of earthquakes in the northwest of the country.
A reporter for a Turkish television station was doing a live report in the city of Malatya when a building collapsed following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the region.
The quake struck a region scarred on both sides of the border by more than a decade of civil war in Syria. On the Syrian side, that area is divided between government-controlled territory and the last enclave in the hands of the opposition, which is surrounded by Russian-backed Syrian forces.
On both sides of the border, tremors jolted people awake several hours before dawn and forced them out into the streets on a cold night of wind, rain and snow. Hundreds of buildings collapsed in cities across the border region.
It happened in the city of Diyarbakir.
AN AREA MARKED BY THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR
Rescuers and residents searched anxiously under the rubble, among the piles of twisted metal and concrete blocks.
In the Turkish city of Adana, witnesses said they heard a person call for help under the remains of a building. “I have no strength to endure,” the person cried. Farther east, in Diyarbakir, cranes and rescue teams worked on a pile of piled-up concrete floors that was once an apartment building.
On the Syrian side of the border, the quake rocked regions under opposition control where there are millions of displaced Syrians and a decrepit health system following several years of war. Turkey, which shares a border with Syria, hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world.
Dozens of countries, including the United States, as well as the European Union and NATO, offered help, whether in the form of medical supplies, rescue teams or money.
