Turkey was hit by a second earthquake less than 10 hours after the first killed thousands and left thousands of others wounded. As scores remained trapped under collapsed buildings, a second quake measuring 7.5 magnitude on the Richter scale struck on Monday afternoon. More than 2,300 have been confirmed dead, as rescue workers struggle to evacuate the survivors.
Major Turkish cities were completely destroyed by the original 7.8-magnitude nighttime tremor, which was followed hours later by a slightly weaker one but the devastation was equally worse. This quake hit an area where millions of refugees had fled the Syrian civil war and other conflicts.
Second Tremor Rocks Turkey
A second earthquake measuring 7.5-magnitude struck at 1:24 pm in Turkey and Syria and wreaked havoc two and a half miles to the southeast of the town of Ekinozu and around 60 miles to the north. Tremors were also felt in Damascus, Latakia, and other Syrian provinces, Syria's SANA news agency reported.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the first earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck in southern Turkey close to Syria's northern border around 04:17 local time on Monday. The earthquake occurred at a shallow depth of 18 km (11 miles), which caused considerable casualties and extensive property damage.
A magnitude 6.7 aftershock struck 11 minutes after the initial earthquake. According to the USGS, shallow strike-slip faulting caused the magnitude 7.8 earthquake.
The earthquake appeared to be linked to the Dead Sea transform fault zone or the East Anatolia fault zone. The US agency said that three earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater had occurred in this region since 1970, indicating that the area where this earthquake occurred is seismically active.
The largest, a magnitude of 6.7, occurred on January 24, 2020. All of these earthquakes happened along or in the vicinity of the East Anatolia fault.
Chaotic Scenes
Thousands are still trapped under the rubble on both sides of the border. As the tragedy worsens and as rescuers continue to comb through mountains of debris in search of victims crushed while they slept, the World Health Organization issued a warning that it expects to see a "significant" rise in the number of fatalities.
Miraculous rescues carried out by first responders, buildings crashing to the ground in a matter of seconds, and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble can all be seen in the heartbreaking videos and images from dozens of locations around the two countries.
Photos and videos from across the two countries showed the devastation brought on by the earthquake. In one video from the Syrian border town of Azaz, a rescuer was seen frantically trudging through a field of rubble while carrying a hurt child, and in another, a building in Sanliurfa, Turkey, completely collapsed.
Buildings were said to have collapsed as far south as the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Hama and as far north-east as Diyarbakir, Turkey.
According to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, tremors from the quake, which lasted around a minute and may have been Turkey's largest ever, were felt as far away as Greenland. People in Egypt, Lebanon, and Cyprus also reported feeling tremors, and authorities in Italy briefly issued a tsunami alert.
According to a separate report from Syrian officials, at least 430 people have died and 1,284 have been injured in government-controlled areas of the country, with most of the casualties being reported from Aleppo, Latakia, Tartus, and Hama.
According to the White Helmets, at least 380 more people died and 1,000 more were injured in Syria's rebel-held regions.
This raises the total number of recorded fatalities from the earthquake throughout the three regions (Turkey, government-controlled Syria and rebel-controlled Syria) to 2,308 thus far.
