Rescuers in Turkey and Syria dug barehanded through the freezing cold Tuesday night looking for survivors among the rubble of thousands of buildings toppled in a series of violent earthquakes.
The number of confirmed deaths in the two countries has soared above 4,300 after strong tremors near the Turkey-Syria border, the largest of which measured a massive magnitude 7.8.
Disaster response teams from Turkey and Syria report that more than 5,600 buildings have collapsed in various cities, including many multi-story apartment blocks that were full of sleeping residents when the first earthquake struck.
In the town of Kahramanmaras, in southeastern Turkey, witnesses struggled to comprehend the scale of the disaster.
“We thought it was the apocalypse,” said Melisa Salman, a 23-year-old reporter. “That was the first time we experienced anything like this.”
Turkey’s aid agency AFAD said on Tuesday there were 2,921 deaths in that country alone, bringing the confirmed tally to 4,365.
The death toll is feared to rise, with World Health Organization officials estimating as many as 20,000 may have died.
In Gaziantep, a Turkish city that is home to countless refugees from the decade-long Syrian civil war, rescuers searching through the rubble screamed and cried as another building collapsed nearby without warning.
The initial earthquake was so large that it was felt as far away as Greenland and the impact is large enough to have triggered a global response. Dozens of nations from the Ukraine to New Zealand have promised to send aid, though freezing rain and freezing temperatures have delayed the response.
In the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa, rescuers worked through the night to pull survivors from the wreckage of a seven-story building that had collapsed.
“There is a family I know under the rubble,” said Omer El Cuneyd, a 20-year-old Syrian student.
“Until 11 am or noon, my friend kept answering the phone. But she no longer answers. She’s down there.
Despite freezing temperatures outside, terrified residents spent the night on the streets, huddling around campfires to keep warm.
Mustafa Koyuncu packed his wife and five children into his car, too scared to move.
“We can’t go home,” the 55-year-old said. “Everyone is afraid”.
Some of the most intense devastation occurred near the quake’s epicenter between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, where entire city blocks lay in ruins under accumulating snow.
‘Apocalypse’
The first earthquake on Monday struck at 4:17 a.m. at a depth of about 18 km near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is home to about 2 million people, the US Geological Survey said.
So far, more than 14,000 people have been injured in Turkey, the disaster management agency said, while Syria said at least 3,411 people were injured.
Officials said three major airports have been rendered inoperable, complicating deliveries of vital aid. A blizzard has covered the main roads leading to the area in ice and snow.
Much of the quake-hit area in northern Syria has already been decimated by years of war and aerial bombardments by Syrian and Russian forces that destroyed homes, hospitals and clinics.
The conflict is already shaping the emergency response, with Syria’s UN envoy Bassam Sabbagh apparently ruling out reopening border crossings that would allow aid to reach areas controlled by rebel groups.
The Syrian Health Ministry reported damage in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, where Russia is leasing a naval facility.
Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo, the commercial center of Syria before the war, often collapsed due to dilapidated infrastructure, which suffered from a lack of oversight during the war.
Authorities cut gas and electricity supplies across the region as a precaution, and also closed schools for two weeks.
The UN cultural agency, Unesco, expressed fears over serious damage to two cities on its heritage list: Aleppo in Syria and Diyarbakir in Turkey.
At a jail that houses mostly members of the Islamic State group in northwest Syria, inmates rioted after the quakes and at least 20 escaped, a source at the facility said.
The United States, the European Union and Russia immediately sent condolences and offers of help.
President Joe Biden promised his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that the United States would send “any and all” help needed.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has also offered to provide “necessary assistance” to Turkey, whose combat drones are helping Kyiv fight off the Russian invasion.
Turkey is located in one of the most active seismic zones in the world.
The country’s last 7.8 magnitude quake was in 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern province of Erzincan. Turkey’s Duzce region was hit by a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in 1999, which killed more than 17,000 people.
Experts have long warned that a major earthquake could devastate Istanbul, a megalopolis of 16 million people filled with ramshackle houses.
© Agence France-Presse
