The most powerful earthquake to strike Turkey and Syria in nearly a century killed over 2,300 people on Monday, sparked frantic rescues, and was felt as far away as Greenland.
Africa Today News, New York had on Monday reported that the 7.8-magnitude early morning quake which was followed by dozens of aftershocks wiped out entire sections of major Turkish cities in a region filled with millions who have fled Syria’s civil war and other conflicts.
Rescuers peeled up debris with heavy machinery and their bare hands in search of survivors, some of whom they could hear pleading for assistance beneath the rubble.
‘Since I live in an earthquake zone, I am used to being shaken,’ said Melisa Salman, a reporter in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras.
‘But that was the first time we have ever experienced anything like that,’ the 23-year-old told reporters.
‘We thought it was the apocalypse.’
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The head of Syria’s National Earthquake Centre, Raed Ahmed, called it “the biggest earthquake recorded in the history of the centre”.
No fewer than 810 people died in rebel and government-controlled parts of Syria, state media and medical sources said, while Turkish officials reported another 1,498 fatalities.
The initial quake was followed by dozens of aftershocks, including a 7.5-magnitude tremor that jolted the region in the middle of search and rescue work on Monday afternoon.
Shocked survivors in Turkey rushed out into the snow-covered streets in their pyjamas, watching rescuers dig through the debris of damaged homes with their hands.
“Seven members of my family are under the debris,” Muhittin Orakci, a stunned survivor in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, told reporters.
“My sister and her three children are there. And also her husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law.”
The rescue was being hampered by a winter blizzard that covered major roads in ice and snow. Officials said the quake made three major airports in the area inoperable, further complicating deliveries of vital aid.
Turkey’s last 7.8-magnitude tremor was in 1939, when 33,000 died in the eastern Erzincan province.
Monday’s first quake struck at 4:17am (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 18 kilometres (11 miles) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is home to around two million people, the US Geological Survey said.
Denmark’s geological institute said tremors from the main quake reached the east coast of Greenland about eight minutes after the tremor struck Turkey.