More than 1,500 people have died and rescuers are racing to pull survivors from beneath the rubble after a devastating earthquake ripped through Turkey and Syria.
The quake left destruction and debris on each side of the border.
One of the strongest earthquakes to hit the region in a century shook residents from their beds around 4 a.m. on Monday, sending tremors as far away as Lebanon and Israel. In Turkey, at least 1,014 people have died while several thousand are injured, according to the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency.
In neighboring Syria, at least 592 people have died, including 371 mostly in the regions of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus, according to Syrian state news agency SANA, which also reported 1,089 injuries.
The epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude quake was 23 kilometers east of Nurdagi, in Turkey’s Gaziantep province, at a depth of 24.1 kilometers, the United States Geological Survey said.
Around nine hours later, a major aftershock that measured 7.5 in magnitude struck in Turkey, which hit around 95 kilometers north of the original quake.
The quake is believed to be the strongest to hit Turkey since 1939, when an earthquake of the same magnitude killed 30,000 persons.
Earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, with fewer than five occurring each year on average, anywhere in the world. Seven quakes with magnitude 7.0 or greater have struck Turkey in the past 25 years — but this one was the most powerful.
Search and rescue teams have been dispatched to the south of the country, Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said. AFAD, the disaster agency, said it had requested international help through the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), the European Union’s humanitarian program.
Nearly 1,000 search and rescue volunteers have been deployed from Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, along with dogs, trucks and aid, according to its governor, Ali Yerlikaya.
