Powerful earthquake kills hundreds in Turkey and Syria

The biggest earthquake to hit Turkey in more than 80 years has killed hundreds of people in the south of the country and across the border in Syria.

The quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, caused huge destruction, levelled more than 1,500 buildings and sent people fleeing into the streets. Turkish state media said 284 people were confirmed dead in the quake that hit just after 4am local time, while vice-president Fuat Oktay said thousands more had been hurt across 10 Turkish provinces.

“We unfortunately think these numbers will rise,” he said in remarks broadcast on television.

An initial Turkish assessment showed some 1,700 buildings had been felled across the affected areas, centred on the Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş and spanning at least 500km. Turkey’s government has dispatched rescue teams, with military and cargo planes carrying supplies to the affected regions.

In Syria, more than 237 people were killed and hundreds more injured in government-held areas, mostly in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo, Tartus and Latakia, according to the country’s deputy health minister. In north-west Syria, the last pocket of the country still under opposition control, the Syria Civil Defence said more than 120 civilians had died.

The worst affected parts of Syria were those already devastated by 12 years of war that has caused significant damage to infrastructure. Syrian TV showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors, with health officials asking the public to help rescue their neighbours and take them to hospitals.

“I thought the room was going to fall on our heads the house was shaking so hard,” said Munsef Hamoud, an elderly man living in the Aleppo suburbs. “Several houses collapsed in our neighbourhood and we heard people screaming from under the rubble.” 

The quake was felt throughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Egypt. In Lebanon, people ran out into the streets to flee shaking buildings through several waves of strong aftershocks.

Residents in several Turkish provinces also fled into the streets in near-freezing temperatures, rain and snow, according to witnesses. TV footage showed rescue workers digging through rubble in the town of Pazarcık, close to the epicentre. In the city of Gaziantep, large sections of a 17th century fortress above the centre were destroyed.

Rescuers pulled a child out of the rubble of a collapsed apartment block in Adana province, while in the city of Diyarbakir earthmoving equipment cleared mangled steel and concrete as rescue workers called out in the search for survivors.

At least 76 aftershocks hit the region, with the most powerful measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, disaster-relief officials said. Turkey’s interior minister Süleyman Soylu said the country was ready to accept international aid.

In Syria, “hundreds of families” were still trapped under the rubble, according to the Syrian Civil Defense. The region, controlled by what remains of the opposition and assorted Islamist militant groups, is home to about 4.6mn people, the majority requiring humanitarian aid, according to UN data.

Many of those people have been displaced from elsewhere in the country, throughout the conflict. As such, some live in informal settlements in the outskirts of cities, in open fields and in abandoned buildings, hollowed out or flattened by air strikes. Much of the medical infrastructure in the area has been destroyed in the war, after hospitals were routinely targeted.

A video published by the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports 36 medical facilities in the north-west, showed a chaotic emergency room at a hospital in Aleppo.

“Our hospitals are overwhelmed with patients filling the hallways,” a statement from the group said. Several of the group’s hospitals sustained “severe damage” including in Idlib, where newborns were evacuated to a nearby facility that was still operating.

Turkey is criss-crossed by faultlines and small tremors are a near-daily occurrence. Monday’s earthquake was the largest to hit the country since 1939. A massive earthquake, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck Istanbul and the surrounding provinces in 1999, killing more than 17,000 people.

Seismologists have blamed a lack of enforcement of building codes for high fatality rates in Turkish disasters. Last year, the urban and environment minister said the country’s housing stock included 6.8mn homes that were “at risk” in an earthquake.