There has just been ANOTHER gigantic quake in Turkey, Magnitude 7.5, shown on the map below. It seems Turkey is literally being torn apart.
Here's a map showing the latest Magnitude 7.5 quake:MORE:
THe apartment buildings . . . they just . . . fell down!
Another large building caught on video, collapsing:
These buildings collapsed on live TV:
This nightmare just won't stop. It keeps getting worse.
Powerful pre-dawn earthquake kills 1,500 in Turkey, Syria as death toll rises: Live updates
he death toll surpassed 1,500 and was rising Monday after a powerful, pre-dawn earthquake and series of strong aftershocks collapsed thousands of buildings along the Turkish-Syrian border.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.8 quake struck at 4:17 a.m. local time. At least 20 aftershocks followed, authorities said. Hours later, a 7.5 magnitude quake struck more than 60 miles away.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said more than 1,000 people were killed and at least 5,300 injured in his country alone.
In Syria, the death toll in government-held areas surpassed 380, and 1,000 were injured, the Syrian Health Ministry reported. In rebel-held areas, more than 200 people were killed, according to Syrian Civil Defense – the White Helmets. The Syrian American Medical Society put the toll at more than 135; both said hundreds were hurt.
Erdogan called the quake the biggest disaster since the 1939 Erzincan earthquake that killed more than 30,000 people. The region sits on top of major fault lines and about 18,000 were killed in earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed from the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 200 miles to the northeast. Erdogan said he spoke with several mayors who reported almost 3,000 buildings had collapsed. About 2,500 people were pulled from the rubble, he said. Schools across much of the country will be closed for at least one week, and schools closer to the quake for two weeks, officials said.
3 Powerful Earthquakes In Turkey In 24 Hours, More Than 1,900 Killed
The 7.8-magnitude night-time tremor, followed hours later by two more big ones, wiped out entire sections of major Turkish cities in a region filled with millions of people who have fled the civil war in Syria and other conflicts.
The head of Syria's National Earthquake Centre, Raed Ahmed, called it "the biggest earthquake recorded in the history of the centre".
Another 1,121 people died in Turkey, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose handling of one of the biggest disasters of his two decades in power could prove consequential to his re-election chances in polls due in May.
The initial quake was followed by more than 50 aftershocks, including 7.5 and a 6-magnitude tremors, that jolted the region in the middle of search and rescue work on Monday afternoon.
AFP reporters and witnesses felt the second jolt as far apart as the Turkish capital Ankara and the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Irbil.
Shocked survivors in Turkey rushed out into the snow-covered streets in their pyjamas, watching rescuers dig through the debris of damaged homes with their hands.
"Seven members of my family are under the debris," Muhittin Orakci, a stunned survivor in Turkey's mostly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, told AFP.
"My sister and her three children are there. And also her husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law."
The rescue was being hampered by a winter blizzard that covered major roads in ice and snow. Officials said the quake made three major airports in the area inoperable, further complicating deliveries of vital aid.
Erdogan conveyed his sympathies and urged national unity, saying "We hope that we will get through this disaster together as soon as possible and with the least damage."
"Many buildings in different cities and villages in northwestern Syria collapsed... Even now, many families are under the rubble," said Ismail Alabdallah.
mages on Turkish television showed rescuers digging through rubble across city centres and residential neighbourhoods of almost all the big cities running along the border with Syria.
Some of the heaviest devastation occurred near the quake's epicentre between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, where entire city blocks lay in ruins under the gathering snow.
Kahramanmaras Governor Omer Faruk Coskun said it was too early to estimate the death count because so many buildings were destroyed.
"It is not possible to give the number of dead and injured at the moment because so many buildings have been destroyed," Coskun said. "The damage is serious."
A famous mosque dating back to the 13th century partially collapsed in the province of Maltaya, where a 14-story building with 28 apartments housed 92 people also collapsed.
In other cities, social media posts showed a 2,200-year-old hilltop castle built by Roman armies in Gaziantep lying in ruins, its walls partially turned to rubble.
"We hear voices here -- and over there, too," one rescuer was overheard as saying on NTV television in front of a flattened building in the city of Diyarbakir.
"There may be 200 people under the rubble."
The Syrian health ministry reported damage across the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, where Russia is leasing a naval facility.
AFP correspondents in northern Syria said terrified residents ran out of their homes after the ground shook.
Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo, Syria's pre-war commercial hub, often collapsed due to the dilapidated infrastructure, which has suffered from lack of war-time oversight.
Naci Gorur, an earthquake expert with Turkey's Academy of Sciences, urged local officials to immediately check the region's dams for cracks to avert potentially catastrophic flooding.
Officials cut off natural gas and power supplies across the region as a precaution, also closing shools for two weeks.
"The size of the aftershocks, which may continue for days although mostly decreasing in energy, brings a risk of collapse of structures already weakened by the earlier events," David Rothery, an earthquake expert at the Open University in Britain.
Huge fires reportedly caused by earthquakes spotted along gas pipelines in Turkey
CBS
Videos emerged on social media Monday showing large fires sending thick smoke into the air in southern Turkey, with people claiming that the powerful earthquakes that hit the region had ruptured natural gas pipelines.
According to BBC News, Turkey's energy minister said there had been serious damage to the country's energy infrastructure, including gas pipes near the epicenter in southeast Turkey, but he did not mention fires or explosions.
The BBC said it had verified one of the social media videos as showing a blaze on the outskirts of the city of Hatay, about 100 miles southwest of Gaziantep, where the first powerful temblor struck.
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