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A huge 7.8 magnitude earthquake has killed more than 4,000 people and counting across a swathe of Turkey and war-torn northern Syria on Monday, February 6th. With the freezing winter weather adding to the plight of the thousands left injured or homeless and hampering efforts of rescue teams working frantically through the night to find survivors.
The quake brought down whole apartment blocks in Turkish cities and piled more devastation on millions of Syrians displaced by years of war.
In Turkey alone, more than 5,600 buildings were destroyed. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said 224 buildings in northwestern Syrian were destroyed and at least 325 were damaged, including aid warehouses. The U.N. had been assisting 2.7 million people each month via cross-border deliveries, which could now be disrupted.
Temperatures in some areas were expected to fall to near freezing overnight, worsening conditions for people trapped under rubble or left homeless.
Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit cities in Turkey’s south, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess and address the impact.
The first powerful quake struck before dawn on a rainy and snowy night. And was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake. It was felt as far away as Cairo, Cyprus, Lebanon and even in Greenland and Denmark.
In Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey, a woman speaking next to the wreckage of the seven-storey block where she lived said: “We were shaken like a cradle. It’s bitterly cold and there’s heavy rain, and people need saving.”
The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the U.S. Geological Survey since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.
The earthquake also halted operations at Turkey’s oil export hub in Ceyhan and stopped crude flows from Iraq and Azerbaijan.
Turkey’s lira hit a record low of 18.85 , in early trade and the country’s stocks tumbled around 5%, although both pared losses later with the currency ending the day flat and equity indexes closing 1.3%-2.2% lower.
Effects of the quake in Syria
At least 1,444 people were killed in Syria on Monday’s quake and about 3,500 injured, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue workers in the northwestern region controlled by insurgents.
In the Syrian rebel-held northwest, emergency workers said 733 people had died.
The United Nations says 4.1 million people, many of them displaced by the conflict and living in camps, already depend on cross-border humanitarian aid in northwest Syria. While international support efforts are stretched and underfunded.
“Syrian communities are simultaneously hit with an ongoing cholera outbreak and harsh winter events including heavy rain and snow over the weekend,” told U.N. spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
In the government-controlled city of Aleppo, two neighbouring buildings collapsed one after the other, filling streets with billowing dust.
Two residents of the city, which has been heavily damaged in the war, said the buildings had fallen in the hours after the quake, which was felt as far away as Cyprus and Lebanon.
In the rebel-held town of Jandaris in Aleppo province, a mound of concrete, steel rods and bundles of clothes lay where a multi-storey building once stood.
“There were 12 families under there. Not one,” said a thin young man, his eyes wide open in shock and his hand bandaged.
Raed al-Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets, a rescue service in rebel-held territory known for pulling people from the ruins of buildings destroyed by air strikes, said they were in “a race against time to save the lives of those under the rubble”.
Syrian state television showed rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss next steps, his office said.
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