The Hatay Province of Turkey had already sustained massive damage in the February 6 earthquakes. Photo / Clodagh Kilcoyne, Pool via AP
The Hatay Province of Turkey had already sustained massive damage in the February 6 earthquakes. Photo / Clodagh Kilcoyne, Pool via AP
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake has hit Turkey and Syria, two weeks after the region was devastated by twin quakes that killed nearly 50,000 people.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) located this morning’s quake at 10km deep and centred 3km west-south-west of Uzunbag in Turkey’s Hatay Province, one of the areasalready worst-hit by the quakes on February 6.
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AFAD, said the magnitude 6.4-earthquake was centred around the town of Defne, in Hatay province.
NTV television said the quake caused some damaged buildings to collapse, but there were no immediate reports of any casualties.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said the quake was felt in Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt.
Hatay’s regional capital of Antakya was shattered in the February 6 earthquakes, with most of its more than 300,000 residents fleeing the area.
Turkish authorities have recorded more than 6000 aftershocks since.
The Turkish disaster management agency, AFAD, has raised the number of confirmed fatalities from the earthquake in Turkey to 41,156. That increases the overall death toll in both Turkey and Syria to 44,844.
Search and rescue operations for survivors have been called off in most of the quake zone, but AFAD chief Yunus Sezer told reporters that search teams were pressing ahead with their efforts in more than a dozen collapsed buildings - most of them also in the hardest-hit province of Hatay.
A general view of damage in the Hatay Province of Turkey from the February 6 earthquakes. Photo / Clodagh Kilcoyne, Pool via AP
There was no sign of anyone being alive under the rubble since three members of one family - a mother, father and 12-year-old boy - were extracted from a collapsed building in Hatay on Saturday. The boy later died.
The European Union’s health agency has already warned of the risk of disease outbreaks in the coming weeks.
The Centre for Disease Prevention and Controls said that “food and water-borne diseases, respiratory infections and vaccine-preventable infections are a risk in the upcoming period, with the potential to cause outbreaks, particularly as survivors are moving to temporary shelters”.
“A surge of cholera cases in the affected areas is a significant possibility in the coming weeks,” it said, noting that authorities in northwestern Syria have reported thousands of cases of the disease since last September and a planned vaccination campaign was delayed due to the quake.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections in May or June, says his country will start building tens of thousands of new homes as early as next month.
Erdogan said the new buildings will be no taller than three or four stories, built on firmer ground and to higher standards and in consultation with “geophysics, geotechnical, geology and seismology professors” and other experts.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, talks to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during their meeting at Esenboga airport in Ankara on February 20. Photo / Burhan Ozbilici, Pool via AP
“We want to avoid disasters ... by shifting our settlements away from the lowlands to the (more solid) mountains as much as possible,” Erdogan said in a televised address during a visit to hard-hit Hatay province.
The Turkish leader said destroyed cultural monuments would be rebuilt in accordance with their “historic and cultural texture”.
Erdogan said around 1.6 million people are currently housed in temporary shelters.
Syria’s minister of public works and housing, Suhail Abdul Latif, says the Syrian government will secure 350 housing units for people displaced by the earthquake and made a call for “friendly countries” to send more.
“We will secure the affected people within our capabilities, but after a while, it is not possible to continue placing families in shelters in order to preserve their health,” he said.
Housing has been a pressing need in all the earthquake-hit areas, with many families sleeping in makeshift tents or cramming into crowded schools and sports stadiums.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Turkey on Sunday and met with US and Turkish military personnel and aid workers at Incirlik Air Base near Adana. Blinken pledged a further $100 million in aid to help Turkey and Syria on top of the $85m that US President Joe Biden announced for Turkey and Syria days after the earthquake.
