“We woke up with a jolt, as the electricity was off. In the southern Turkish town of Gaziantep, 150 miles from the border with Syria and 50 miles from the epicentre of the earthquake in Kahramanmaraş, people felt aftershocks hours later. Tremors were felt as far away as Lebanon, Greece, Israel and the island of Cyprus. Buildings were levelled while many people were still asleep.
Television images from Turkey showed shocked people standing in the snow in their pyjamas, watching rescuers dig through the debris of damaged homes. The quake struck at 4.17am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9km (11 miles) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is home to about 2 million people, the US Geological Survey said. In the Syrian rebel-held north-west, rescuers said 147 people had died. In Syria, already wrecked by more than 11 years of civil war, the health ministry said more than 326 people had been killed and 1,042 injured. Nearly 15,000 search-and-rescue personnel have been deployed to the region,” he said. “One hundred and thirty aftershocks have been recorded after the earthquake. Yunus Sezer, who heads Turkey’s disaster relief agency Afad, said at least 8,500 were injured in the country’s south. Turkey’s vice-president, Fuat Oktay, said the death toll had surpassed 1,500 people in Turkey alone by the early evening. The Turkish state broadcaster TRT showed images of panicked people sheltering in the street as buildings around them quaked during the aftershock in the town of Kahramanmaraş, north of Gaziantep. The magnitude-7.8 quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, was followed by a second 7.7 quake in the middle of the day on Monday, as rescuers in both countries were still attempting to search for survivors.
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