A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit southern Turkey and northern Syria early Monday morning, February 6, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing at least 641 people as at press time.
Turkish officials say they believe hundreds were still trapped under rubble, and the toll is expected to rise as rescue workers searched mounds of wreckage in cities and towns across the area.
On both sides of the Turkey-Syria border, residents were woken from sleep by the pre-dawn quake on a cold, rainy and snowy winter night. The quake, felt as far away as Cairo in Egypt, struck a region that has been shaped by more than a decade of civil war in Syria. Millions of Syrian refugees live in Turkey. The area of Syria affected by the quake is divided between government-held territory and the country?s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. The quake was centered about 90 kilometers (60 miles) from the Syrian border outside the city of Gaziantep,…
Source: Linda Ikeji
