Rescuers search through rubble in Turkey and Syria for earthquakes.
Following a series of powerful tremors close to the Turkey-Syria border, the number of confirmed fatalities across the two countries has risen past 4,300. The strongest of these shocks had a magnitude of 7.8.
More than 5,600 buildings, including several multi-story apartment buildings that were packed with sleeping occupants when the first earthquake struck, have been flattened across numerous cities, according to Turkish and Syrian disaster response teams.
Eyewitnesses in the southeast Turkish city of Kahramanmaras struggled to grasp the scope of the catastrophe.
Melisa Salman, a 23-year-old reporter, said, “We believed it to be the end of the world. “We had never experienced anything like that before,” one person said.
Turkey’s humanitarian organisation AFAD reported on Tuesday that the confirmed death toll had increased to 4,365, with 2,921 of those deaths occurring in Turkey alone.
In the Syrian village of Besnia, which is close to the Turkish border, locals search among the wreckage of collapsed buildings for fatalities and survivors.
With up to 20,000 possible fatalities, according to World Health Organization authorities, there are worries that the death toll may continue to increase steadily.
Rescuers searching amid the rubble in Gaziantep, a Turkish city where numerous refugees from Syria’s ten-year civil conflict now reside, screamed, sobbed, and pleaded for protection as another building abruptly collapsed nearby.
The original earthquake’s magnitude was so great that it could be felt as far away as Greenland, and its effects were so severe that they prompted a global response.
Although freezing rain and below-freezing temperatures have hindered the response, dozens of countries, from the Ukraine to New Zealand, have committed to provide assistance.
Rescuers were working through the night to try and extract people from the rubble of a fallen seven-story building in the city of Sanliurfa in southeast Turkey.
The 20-year-old Syrian student Omer El Cuneyd added, “There is a family I know under the rubble.”
“My pal was still answering the phone till 11:00 or noon. She no longer responds, though. She is situated there.”
Fearful locals spent the night on the streets, huddling around fires for warmth despite the subzero outside temperatures.
