TURKEY/ SYRIA: A new 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey on Monday, killing three people and injuring more than 200 in regions devastated two weeks ago by a large earthquake that took thousands of lives. Authorities said more structures collapsed, trapping occupants and injuring several people in Turkey and Syria.
The village of Defne in Turkey’s Hatay province, the epicentre of Monday’s earthquake, was one of the hardest-hit regions in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that occurred on February 6. It was also felt in Jordan, Syria, Israel, Cyprus, and as far away as Egypt, and was followed by a second earthquake, measuring magnitude 5.8.
Suleyman Soylu, the interior minister of Turkey, reported three fatalities and 213 injuries. Search and rescue operations were underway in the three tumbled buildings, where five individuals were reportedly trapped.
Fresh tremors shatter lives in Turkey
Several buildings fell during the recent earthquake, trapping people inside, said Lutfu Savas Hatay’s mayor. He said on NTV that these might be people who had returned to their homes or were attempting to remove their furniture from destroyed structures.
Fuat Oktay, the vice president of Turkey, reported that at least eight individuals were hospitalised in his country. According to SANA, the state news agency of Syria, six people were hurt in Aleppo by falling rubble.
Police search crews in Hatay managed to free one person trapped inside a three-story structure while attempting to reach three other occupants, according to HaberTurk television.
More than 130 injuries, the majority not life-threatening, including fractures and incidents of individuals passing out from panic, were reported by the White Helmets, a civil defence group in northwest Syria. A number of buildings in regions previously affected by the earthquake also collapsed.
The February 6 earthquake killed over 45,000 people in both nations, but most of these deaths occurred in Turkey, where more than 1.5 million people are currently staying in temporary shelters. Turkish officials have subsequently recorded more than 6,000 aftershocks.
Reporters for HaberTurk reported the quake on Monday forcefully shocked them, and they had to hold on to one another to keep from falling.
In the Syrian city of Idlib, terrified locals were preparing to sleep in parks and other public spaces while fuel lines formed at gas stations as people tried to get as far away from any potential collapsed buildings as possible.
The Syrian American Medical Society, which runs hospitals in northern Syria, helped several people with heart attacks because of the recent earthquake. One of them was a 7-year-old boy.
Earlier on Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Hatay and declared that his administration would start building over 200,000 new homes in the area damaged by the earthquake as soon as next month.
Erdogan said that the new buildings wouldn’t be taller than three or four stories and would be built to higher standards and on more stable land after consulting “geophysics, geotechnical, geology, and seismology professors” and other experts.
The president of Turkey said that damaged cultural landmarks would be fixed up so that they could keep their “historical and cultural texture.”
Search and rescue operations suspended
Erdogan stated that around 1.6 million people are currently living in temporary shelters.
The number of reported dead from the earthquake in Turkey on February 6 was increased to 41,156 by the Turkish disaster management organisation AFAD on Monday. This brought the total number of fatalities in both Turkey and Syria to 44,844.
Most search and rescue operations for survivors have been suspended in the earthquake zone. However, AFAD chief Yunus Sezer stated that search teams were still working on over a dozen collapsed buildings, mostly in Hatay province.
After three family members—a mother, father, and 12-year-old boy—were rescued from a collapsed building in Hatay on Saturday, there were no signs that anyone else was still alive beneath the debris. The boy passed away later.
Officials said that more than 110,000 buildings in 11 Turkish districts that were hit by the earthquake were either completely destroyed or damaged so badly that they had to be torn down.
In the upcoming weeks, there is a possibility of illness outbreaks, the health agency of the European Union warned on Monday. As survivors move into temporary shelters, the Institute for Disease Prevention and Controls warned that “food and water-borne diseases, respiratory infections, and vaccine-preventable infections are a risk in the coming period, with the potential to cause outbreaks.”
Also Read: Blinken to Discuss Quake Help and Nordic NATO Proposal During His Visit to Turkey
