Authorities reported that a new 6.4 magnitude earthquake that struck sections of Turkey two weeks ago and left tens of thousands dead and thousands injured on Monday killed three people and injured more than 200. Numerous injuries were also reported in the nearby Syrian nation of Syria as more structures collapsed, trapping some people inside.
The town of Defne, in the Turkish province of Hatay, was the epicentre of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that occurred on February 6 and was one of the hardest-hit areas. It was followed by a second, magnitude 5.8 earthquake that was felt as far away as Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Cyprus, and Israel.
Suleyman Soylu, the interior minister of Turkey, reported three fatalities and 213 injuries. Six persons were allegedly trapped in three collapsed buildings, and search and rescue operations were in progress there.
According to HaberTurk television, police in Hatay managed to free one individual who was trapped inside a three-story building while attempting to reach three additional people. According to the report, among those trapped were movers who were assisting people in removing furnishings and other belongings from a structure damaged by the powerful earthquake.
According to SANA, Syria’s official news service, falling debris in Aleppo injured six people. More than 130 injuries were recorded by the White Helmets, a civil defence group in northwest Syria, most of which were not life-threatening. These injuries included fractures and cases of people passing out from fear, and several buildings in already earthquake-damaged areas collapsed.
Nearly 45,000 people were killed in both countries by the earthquake on February 6; the bulk of these deaths occurred in Turkey, where more than 1.5 million people are currently staying in temporary shelters. More than 6,000 aftershocks have since been reported by Turkish officials.
Journalists for HaberTurk said they were severely shaken by Monday’s earthquake and held on to one another to prevent falling.
According to eyewitness Alejandro Malaver, people in the Turkish city of Adana fled their homes for the streets while toting blankets in their cars. Everyone, according to Malaver, is extremely frightened and “no one wants to get back into their homes.”
Mehmet Salhaoglullari, a resident of a village close to Samandag, claimed to have been eating in an eatery when the structure started to tremble.
He said, “We all flung ourselves outside and we kept shaking outside.”
Fuel lines formed at gas stations as people tried to get as far away from any potential collapsed buildings as possible in the Syrian city of Idlib. Terrified residents were planning to sleep in parks and other public spaces.
A 7-year-old boy was among the patients treated by the Syrian American Medical Society, which operates hospitals in northern Syria, for heart attacks brought on by fear after the recent earthquake.
Prior to his journey to Hatay on Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his administration would start building nearly 200,000 new homes in the area that had been devastated by the earthquake as early as next month.
According to Erdogan, the new structures won’t be any taller than three or four floors, will be constructed to higher standards and on more stable ground after consulting “professors of geophysics, geotechnical, geology, and seismology,” among other specialists.
The Turkish president declared that rebuilt cultural landmarks would maintain their “historic and cultural texture.”
According to Erdogan, there are presently 1.6 million people living in temporary shelters.
The number of verified fatalities from the earthquake in Turkey on February 6 was increased by the Turkish disaster management organisation AFAD on Monday to 41,156. This brought the total number of fatalities in both Turkey and Syria to 44,844.
The majority of the earthquake zone has suspended search and rescue efforts for survivors, but AFAD head Yunus Sezer earlier stated that teams were still searching more than a dozen collapsed buildings, mostly in Hatay province.
Since three members of one family—a mother, father, and 12-year-old boy—were pulled from a collapsed building in Hatay on Saturday, there have been no indications that anyone is still living beneath the debris. Later on, the child passed away.
Authorities reported that more than 110,000 structures in 11 earthquake-affected Turkish provinces were either completely destroyed or sustained such severe damage that they needed to be demolished.
The danger of disease outbreaks in the upcoming weeks was warned of on Monday by the health agency of the European Union. “Food and water-borne diseases, respiratory infections, and vaccine-preventable infections are a risk in the upcoming period, with the potential to cause outbreaks, especially as survivors are moving to temporary shelters,” the Centre for Disease Prevention and Controls stated.
It noted that authorities in northwest Syria have reported thousands of cases of the disease since last September and that a planned vaccination campaign was postponed due to the earthquake. It warned that “a surge of cholera cases in the affected areas is a significant possibility in the coming weeks.”
