DIYARBAKIR/ANKARA: A major earthquake of magnitude 7.9 struck central Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday, killing about over 1.000 people as buildings collapsed across the snowy region, and triggering a search for survivors trapped in rubble.
The quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, was also felt in Cyprus and Lebanon.
“I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I’ve lived,” said Erdem, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicentre, who declined to give his surname.
“We were shaken at least three times very strongly, like a baby in a crib.”
Turkey’s disaster agency said 912 people had been killed, and 440 hurt, as authorities scrambled rescue teams and supply aircraft to the affected area, while declaring a “level 4 alarm” that calls for international assistance.
“Everybody is sitting in their cars or trying to drive to open spaces away from buildings,” Erdem said by telephone.
The United States was “profoundly concerned” about the quake in Turkey and Syria and was monitoring events closely, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter.
“I have been in touch with Turkish officials to relay that we stand ready to provide any and all needed assistance,” he said.
The region straddles seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes.
President Bashar al-Assad was holding an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss the next steps, his office said.
“Wounded people are still arriving in waves,” Aleppo’s health director, Ziad Hage Taha, told Reuters by telephone.
President Tayyip Erdogan spoke by telephone with the governors of eight affected provinces to gather information on the situation and rescue efforts, his office said in a statement.
Syrian state media said more than 200 people were killed and dozens injured there, most in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where numerous buildings had been brought down.
“The situation is very tragic, tens of buildings have collapsed in the city of Salqin,” a member of the White Helmets rescue organisation said in a video clip on Twitter, referring to a town about 5 km (3 miles) from the Turkish border.
The rescuer on the clip, which showed a rubble-strewn street, said homes were “totally destroyed”.
Many buildings in the region had already suffered damage in fighting during Syria’s nearly 12-year-long civil war.
People in Damascus, and in the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli, ran into the street and took to their cars to get away from their buildings in case they collapsed, witnesses said.
In Turkey’s Gaziantep, Erdem also said people had fled from their shaking homes and were too scared to return.
