An injured child waiting to be treated at Bab al-Hawa hospital following an earthquake, in the rebel-held northern countryside of Syria's Idlib province on the border with Turkey. Photo: AAREF WATAD
More than 500 people have been killed and thousands injured on Monday, when a major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck central Turkey and northwest Syria, collapsing buildings and triggering searches for survivors in the rubble.
The quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, was also felt in Cyprus and Lebanon.
"We were shaken like a cradle," one woman said, her arm broken and wounds on her face as she spoke in an ambulance near the wreckage of the seven-storey block where she lived in Diyarbakir.
"There were nine of us at home. Two sons of mine are still in the rubble, I'm waiting for them."
"I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I've lived," Erdem said, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake's epicentre, who declined to give his surname.
"We were shaken at least three times very strongly."
Turkey's vice president Fuat Oktay said 284 people had been killed and 2323 people were injured, as authorities scrambled rescue teams and supply aircraft to the affected area, while declaring a "level 4 alarm" that calls for international assistance.
In Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of civil war, a government health official said more than 237 people had been confirmed killed and some 600 injured, most in the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia, where numerous buildings tumbled down.
At least 147 people were killed in opposition-held northwest Syria, rescuers said on Monday.
The White Helmets rescue team said on Twitter that 147 people had died and more than 340 were injured.
"The toll may increase as many families are still trapped," it wrote. "Our teams are on the ground searching for survivors and removing the dead from the rubble."
Rescuers evacuate a victim from an eight-storey building in Hama, Syria, after the earthquake in Turkey. Photo: AFP PHOTO / HO / SANA
Turkish broadcaster RTR showed rescue workers in Osmaniye province using a blanket to carry an injured man out of a collapsed four-storey building and putting him in an ambulance. He was the fifth to be pulled from the rubble, it said.
Footage on broadcaster CNNTurk showed the historic Gaziantep Castle was severely damaged.
An injured child is carried to safety in the town of Jandaris, in the countryside of Syria's northwestern city of Afrin in the rebel-held part of Aleppo province. Photo: AFP / Rami al Sayed
President Tayyip Erdogan spoke by telephone with the governors of eight affected provinces to gather information on the situation and rescue efforts, his office said in a statement.
"There was a huge noise and the building next to ours collapsed when the earthquake happened," said a 30-year-old in Diyarbakir.
"I rushed outside. There was screaming everywhere. I started pulling rocks away with my hands. We pulled out the injured with friends, but the screaming didn't stop. Then the (rescue) teams came."
'Totally destroyed'
In the Syrian city of Aleppo, heavily damaged during the war, health director Ziad Hage Taha told Reuters wounded people were "arriving in waves".
Syrian state television showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet.
Rescue workers in rebel-held areas of Syria reported extensive damage.
In the border town of Azaz - an area held by opposition forces - footage showed a rescue worker carrying a toddler from a damaged building.
"The situation is very tragic, tens of buildings have collapsed in the city of Salqin," a member of the White Helmets rescue organisation said in a video clip on Twitter, referring to another town about 5km (3 miles) from the Turkish border.
Homes were "totally destroyed", said the rescuer on the clip, which showed a street strewn with rubble.
President Bashar al-Assad was holding an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss the next steps, his office said.
Syrian state television showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. Health officials urged the public to help take the injured to emergency rooms.
"Wounded people are still arriving in waves," Aleppo's health director, Ziad Hage Taha, told Reuters by telephone.
The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in Aleppo posted photographs of blocks of stone that had crashed down onto its mezzanine.
In nearby countryside, rescuers carried a bloodied, wailing baby out of a collapsed building, while, in the town of Azaz, a crane prised away slabs of concrete as rescuers carried away a body wrapped in a sheet.
Many buildings in the region had already suffered damage in fighting during nearly 12 years of civil war.
People in Damascus, and in the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli, ran into the street and took to their cars to get away from their buildings in case they collapsed, witnesses said.
The United States was "profoundly concerned" about the quake in Turkey and Syria and was monitoring events closely, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter.
"I have been in touch with Turkish officials to relay that we stand ready to provide any and all needed assistance," he said.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.8 quake struck at a depth of 17.9km. It reported a series of earthquakes, one of 6.7 magnitude.
The region straddles seismic fault lines.
It is the most severe quake in Turkey since 1999 when a similar magnitude quake devastated Izmit and the heavily populated eastern Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, killing more than 17,000.
The tremor lasted about a minute and shattered windows, according to a Reuters witness in Diyarbakir, 350km (218 miles) to the east, where a security official said at least 17 buildings collapsed.
Authorities said 16 structures collapsed in Sanliurfa and 34 in Osmaniye.
Broadcasters TRT and Haberturk showed footage of people picking through building wreckage, moving stretchers and seeking survivors in the city of Kahramanmaras, where it was still dark.
"Our primary job is to carry out the search and rescue work and to do that all our teams are on alert," Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters.
In this video grab from AFP TV taken on February 6, 2023, rescuers search for victims of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, levelling buildings across several cities and causing damages in neighbouring Syria. Photo: MAHMUT BOZARSLAN
Tremors were also felt in the Turkish capital of Ankara, 460km (286 miles) northwest of the epicentre, and in Cyprus, where police reported no damage.
"The earthquake struck in a region that we feared. There is serious widespread damage," Kerem Kinik, the chief of the Turkish Red Crescent relief agency, told Haberturk, issuing an appeal for blood donations.
-Reuters