On Monday, a new 6.4 magnitude earthquake killed three people and injured more than 200 in parts of Turkey devastated by a massive quake that killed tens of thousands two weeks ago. More buildings collapsed, trapping occupants, and too many people got injured in Turkey and Syria.
The quake on Monday was centered in the town of Defne in Turkey’s Hatay province. It was felt in Syria, Jordan, Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt.
Suleyman Soylu, Turkey’s Interior Minister, said three people were killed and 213 were injured. Search and rescue operations were underway in three collapsed buildings where five people were believed to be trapped.
According to Hatay mayor Lutfu Savas, several buildings collapsed in the new quake, trapping people inside. He told NTV television that these could be people returning home or attempting to move their furniture out of damaged buildings.
According to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay, at least eight people have been hospitalized in Turkey. According to Syria’s state news agency, SANA, six people were injured by falling debris in Aleppo.
Police in Hatay rescued one person who was trapped inside a three-story building and was attempting to reach three others, according to Haber Turk television.
The earthquake on February 6 killed nearly 45,000 people in both countries, the vast majority of whom were in Turkey, where more than a million and a half people are in temporary shelters. Since then, Turkish authorities have recorded over 6,000 aftershocks.
The quake jolted HaberTurk journalists reporting from Hatay, who said they held on to each other to avoid falling.
Eyewitness Alejandro Malaver said people in the Turkish city of Adana left their homes for the streets, carrying blankets into their cars. Malaver stated that everyone is terrified and that “no one wants to get back into their houses.”
The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, reported that several people were injured in Syria’s rebel-held northwest after jumping from buildings or being struck by falling debris in Jinderis, one of the towns hardest hit by the Feb. 6 earthquake.
Fuel lines formed at gas stations as people tried to move as far away from potentially collapsing buildings as possible in the Syrian city of Idlib. Frightened residents were preparing to sleep in parks and other public places.
One patient who received treatment from the Syrian American Medical Society, which runs hospitals in northern Syria, was a 7-year-old boy who suffered heart attacks as a result of the recent earthquake.
There was no indication that anyone was still alive when the three members of one family—a mother, a father, and a 12-year-old boy—were pulled from a destroyed structure in Hatay on Saturday. Later on, the kid passed away.
