A powerful earthquake struck southern Turkey before dawn on Monday, killing at least 50 people and trapping hundreds of others in collapsed apartment buildings in several provinces as rescue workers raced to save them, the government said.
(Bloomberg) — A powerful earthquake struck southern Turkey before dawn on Monday, killing at least 50 people and trapping hundreds of others in collapsed apartment buildings in several provinces as rescue workers raced to save them, the government said.
Read More: The strong earthquake toppled buildings in Turkey and was felt elsewhere in the Middle East.
In Pictures: Major Earthquake Strikes Turkey, Syria
The quake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 struck at a depth of 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) with an epicenter near the city of Gaziantep, according to Turkey’s Kandilli observatory based in Istanbul. GFZ Helmholtz Centre Potsdam put the magnitude of the quake at 7.7. The earthquake was felt as far as Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq, Egypt and Israel.
At least 50 people were confirmed dead in Sanliurfa, Osmaniye, Diyarbakir and Malatya provinces, where scores of buildings collapsed, authorities said. Hundreds of people were injured, they said. The temblor also damaged some highways in Gaziantep province but no power outage was immediately reported.
“The quake struck at 4:17 a.m. local time,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told a televised news conference in Ankara. “We have activated a fourth level alert, this entails international help.”
He said the quake caused damage and left casualties in at least 10 provinces. These included Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, Malatya, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir and Adana, authorities said. Turkey hosts the biggest refugee population in the world and the bulk of some of 3.7 million Syrian refugees are concentrated in areas where the quake caused damage.
–With assistance from Tim Smith.
(Updates casualty figures in first and third paragraphs)
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