Kahramanmaras (Turkiye)/Damascus: A huge earthquake killed more than 5,000 people across a swathe of Turkiye and northwest Syria on Monday, with freezing winter weather adding to the plight of the many thousands left injured or homeless and hampering efforts to find survivors.
The magnitude 7.8 quake brought down whole apartment blocks in Turkish cities and piled more devastation on millions of Syrians displaced by years of war.
The worst tremor to strike Turkiye this century, it came before sunrise in harsh weather and was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake of magnitude 7. 5.
“It was like the apocalypse,” said Abdul Salam al-Mahmoud, a Syrian in the northern town of Atareb. “It’s bitterly cold and there's heavy rain, and people need saving. ” The second quake was big enough to bring down more buildings and, like the first, was felt across the region, endangering rescuers struggling to pull casualties from the rubble.
The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the US Geological Survey since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021. In Turkiye, the toll stood at 3,381, health minister Fahrettin Koca said, and 20,426 people were recorded as injured. At least 1,509 people were killed and 3,548 injured in Syria, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue workers in the northwestern region controlled by insurgents.
Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit cities in Turkiye's south, home to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess and address the impact. Temperatures in some areas were expected to fall to near freezing overnight, worsening conditions for people trapped under rubble or left homeless. Rain was falling after snowstorms swept the country over the weekend.
President Tayyip Erdogan, who is preparing for a tough election in May, called it a historic disaster and the worst earthquake to hit Turkiye since 1939, but said authorities were doing all they could.