TESTIMONIALS – Residents were awakened by powerful tremors of magnitude 7.8 around 4 a.m. Monday. While rescuers are working in the rubble, the survivors find themselves homeless, under the snow.
Correspondent in Istanbul
After the shock, the emotion. Suddenly awakened around 4 a.m. by a wave of powerful earthquakes, in southern Turkey, thousands of inhabitants find themselves homeless and under the snow. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed at least 2,350 people in seven different southern provinces of the country, according to the Turkish president, and 1,440 others lost their lives in Syria, according to the Syrian health minister and rescuers in rebel areas.
According to Health Ministry figures reported by the official Sana news agency, 711 people were killed and 1,431 injured in government areas. The White Helmets, rescue workers who are in rebel areas, reported 733 dead and 2,100 injured, adding that this assessment was provisional.
More than 14,500 people were injured in Turkey, and 4,748 buildings collapsed, the same sources said. At this stage, the provisional toll of the authorities of the two countries reports at least 3,800 dead.
The images, relayed by television and on social networks, give an overview of the extent of the damage: buildings collapsed like houses of cards, panicked families taking refuge in parks, frantic quest for survivors. Dispatched to the scene by the authorities, the rescue teams are busy trying to find survivors under the rubble. ” Our primary mission is to carry out search and rescue operations, and for this all our teams are on alert. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters. ” We hear the voices of victims here and there. We think maybe 200 people are under the rubble “, confided in the early morning a rescuer dispatched in front of a destroyed building in Diyarbakir on the NTV channel.
“It lasted several seconds”
The Turkish city of Gaziantep was particularly affected. “I felt my bed shaking. I wanted to get up to take shelter, but it was rocking in all directions. It lasted several seconds, but it felt like an eternity “, testifies Ahmet, a resident contacted by Le Figaro. According to the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ), the earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers, near the town of Kahramanmaras, sixty kilometers from the Syrian border. The local relief management agency rated the tremor at a magnitude of 7.4. This is, according to the local press, the largest earthquake since that of August 17, 1999, which caused the death of 17,000 people, including a thousand in Istanbul. Turkey is located in one of the most active seismic zones in the world.
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Felt throughout the southeast of the country, powerful tremors were also seen in Iraq, Cyprus and Lebanon. Reached by telephone in Beirut, a tourist confides that she ” first believed in an attack » before realizing that the earth was moving. But it is in Syria that the population seems to have been most affected. In northern Syria, figures released by state media and rescue workers in the rebel area on Monday morning show at least 386 dead and 1,042 injured, a provisional toll that is likely to worsen. “The news from Syria is terrifying and heartbreaking. The infrastructure is already damaged by years of war and bombing. We urgently need help to save the lives of those injured by this powerful earthquake.“Warns Dr. Khaula Sawah, president of the UOSSM-USA (Union of relief organizations and medical care).
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