Another 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits southern Turkey: The southernmost region of Turkey, Hatay, was severely damaged by the 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck the country on February 6 and left more than 41,000 people dead, according to the disaster response organization AFAD.
Around 8:04 pm (1704 GMT), the village of Defne was struck by an earthquake that was felt powerfully by AFP teams in Antakya and Adana, 200 kilometers (300 miles) away.
A second 5.8-magnitude earthquake, with its epicenter in Hatay’s Samandag district, was reported three minutes later by the emergency management organization on Twitter.
An AFP reporter described scenes of terror in Antakya and added that the recent shocks had caused dust to rise in the already destroyed city.
Many people, some of whom appeared to be injured, begged for assistance as the walls of severely damaged buildings collapsed.
In Antakya, 18-year-old Ali Mazlum told AFP that he and AFAD were searching for his family’s dead when the earthquake struck.
“You don’t know what to do. We held each other as the walls began to collapse in front of us. We had the impression that the ground was about to engulf us.
Mazlum, who has spent the past 12 years residing in Antakya, was searching for the bodies of his brother-in-law and his family and his sister and their family.
A road buried in debris from the recent earthquake was being cleared by a digger a few meters distant.
AFTERSHOCKS
One of the rescuers added, “This one just fell,” pointing to the collapsed structure.
The catastrophe service warned citizens not to approach the coast in the Mediterranean Sea province of Hatay because the sea level could rise by 50 centimeters.
Fuat Oktay, the vice president of Turkey, asked people to heed official warnings and avoid damaged structures in a tweet.
After the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria and caused millions of people to lose their homes, more than 6,000 aftershocks have been registered, according to AFAD.
Because of the intensity of the first tremor, officials predicted that the aftershocks from the earthquake on February 6 would last for a year.
Following the latest earthquake, people swarmed to the streets, according to AFP correspondents in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.
A structure damaged in the prior earthquake collapsed, according to an AFP photographer in the nearby city of Azaz.
The earthquake on February 6 claimed the lives of 41,156 people in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria, but analysts anticipate the death toll will grow once the rubble is removed and the rescue efforts are completed.
Officials said on Sunday that only two provinces—Hatay and Kahramanmaras—remain where rescue efforts are still ongoing after the previous tremors struck eleven.
Almost 118,000 houses were damaged by the earthquake two weeks ago, which devastated large portions of northern Syria and southeastern Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to construct roughly 200,000 new, more durable, four-story-tall homes within a year on Monday.