Nearly 2,000 people were killed in southeastern Turkey and neighboring Syria on Monday by a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake, followed a few hours later by a very strong 7.5 magnitude aftershock, tremors recorded until the Greenland.
This assessment, very provisional, continues to increase, a very large number of people remaining trapped under the collapsed buildings which number in the thousands. The rain and snow, which fell in some places in abundance, and the expected drop in temperatures will make the situation of people who find themselves homeless, as well as the work of the relief workers, even more difficult.
The first tremor occurred at 4:17 a.m. local time (1:17 a.m. GMT), in the district of Pazarcik, in the province of Kahramanmaras (southeast), about 60 km as the crow flies from the Syrian border.
Dozens of aftershocks followed, before a new earthquake of magnitude 7.5, at 10:24 GMT, still in southeastern Turkey, 4 km southeast of the town of Ekinozu.
After the second earthquake, Tulin, a young woman in her thirties living in Kayapinar in the district of Diyarbakir, recounts her “fear” to go home.
“I felt it strongly because I live on the top floor. We went out in a panic. It was almost the same as this morning. I’m so scared now, I can’t go back to my apartment, I don’t know not what will happen now”she told AFP.
And the balance sheets continue to climb: in Syria, the earthquake killed 783 people and injured 2,280, according to the Syrian Ministry of Health and rescue workers in rebel areas.
In Turkey, the balance sheet, still provisional, rose to 1,121 dead and more than 7,630 injured, according to the government agency for disaster management (Afad), which reports 2,834 collapsed buildings.
“Apocalypse”
“My sister and her three children are under the rubble. Also her husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law. Seven members of our family are under the rubble”told AFP in the morning Muhittin Orakci who was waiting for rescue operations in front of a collapsed building in Diyarbakir, the large Kurdish-majority city in southeastern Turkey.
The balance sheet is still likely to evolve in the affected cities, Adana, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir in particular. In Iskenderun and Adiyaman, public hospitals collapsed under the effect of the earthquake, which occurred at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers.
This earthquake is the largest in Turkey since the earthquake of August 17, 1999, which caused the death of 17,000 people, including a thousand in Istanbul.
In Kahramanmaras, Melisa Salman, a 23-year-old local journalist, says she has always lived with earthquakes. “I’m used to shaking, but this is the first time I’ve seen something like this. We thought it was the apocalypse”.
The bad weather hitting this mountainous region paralyzes the main airports around Diyarbakir and Malatya, where it continues to snow very heavily, leaving the survivors haggard, in their pajamas outside in the cold.
“We are hearing voices here and there. We think maybe 200 people are under the rubble,” said a rescuer dispatched to a destroyed building in Diyarbakir, according to images broadcast on the NTV channel.
Faced with this desolation, the inhabitants everywhere are mobilizing and trying to clear the ruins with their bare hands, using buckets to evacuate the debris.
In Syria, the earthquake caused scenes of panic, the inhabitants rushed outside, on foot or by car, despite the torrential rains.
In Hama (center-west), rescuers and civilians extract by hand, helped by heavy machinery, the bodies of victims under the rubble, including that of a child, AFP noted.
“We have received reports of a seven-story building collapsing, where between 100 and 150 people lived. We have found 40-45 people. There are reports of 15-25 dead”said the disaster management coordinator for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Hama, Alaa al-Chaker.
In Jindayris (north-west), a man, collapsed, mourns the death of his son, a very small boy bundled up in an anorak, which he holds in his arms.
Biden, Xi, Poutine…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose reaction to this tragedy will most likely be closely watched before the May 14 election which promises to be very tight, called for national unity.
“We hope that we will come out of this disaster together as quickly as possible and with as little damage as possible”he tweeted, adding that Turkey had received aid from 45 countries.
Condolences poured in from all over the world, from American President Joe Biden to his Russian counterparts Vladimir Putin to the still Chinese Xi Jinping, passing by Pope Francis who said he was “deeply saddened”as well as proposals for humanitarian and medical aid.
Greece notably promised “to make available (…) all its forces to come to the aid of neighboring Turkey”with whom she has a stormy relationship.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced to him that he had approved a request for aid from Syria, with which the Jewish state does not have diplomatic relations.
The European Union has activated its “civil protection mechanism” et “Teams from the Netherlands and Romania are already on the way”Turkey’s brother country Azerbaijan announced the immediate dispatch of 370 rescuers, and India that of rescue and medical teams and relief equipment
Citadel of Aleppo
In Syria, according to a provisional report from the Ministry of Health, quoted by the official agency Sana, 403 people were killed and 1,284 others injured in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartous, under the control of the regime. In the rebel areas, the White Helmets rescuers reported 380 dead and more than a thousand injured.
Aleppo citadel and several other archaeological sites damaged, General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums says
In Turkey, the heaviest damage was recorded near the epicenter of the night’s quake, between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, where entire city blocks lay in ruins under snow.
The gas pipelines supplying the region were also affected and the provinces of Hatay, Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep are deprived of gas, said the public body Botas.
Iraqi Kurdistan has announced that it has suspended “for security purposes” its oil exports to Turkey.
The tremors, felt throughout the south-east of the country, were also felt in Lebanon and Cyprus, according to AFP correspondents, as well as in Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the country in Erbil and Douk, but none victim was not reported.
According to the Danish Geological Institute, the tremors were felt as far away as Greenland.
Turkey is located on one of the most active seismic zones in the world.
At the end of November, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck northwestern Turkey, injuring around 50 people and causing limited damage, according to the Turkish emergency services.