The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, expressed solidarity this Monday in Olhão with the peoples of Turkey and Syria, hit by an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, which left about 1,500 dead.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa expressed his solidarity with the victims of the earthquake in statements to journalists on the sidelines of a visit to a school in Olhão held this morning to show support for local authorities and a foreign citizen who was attacked and robbed by a group of young people , on January 25, in an action made public in a video published on social networks, which sparked outrage and condemnation from the Portuguese authorities.
“It is a tragedy and, if I may say so, the tragedy is even greater in Syria than in Turkey. It is clear that in Turkey it occurs to us to think more quickly about what happened, because it is a closer country is situated.” but here it is, with different structures and the number of casualties was much lower than what is thought in Syria”said the President of the Republic.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that his position had already been made known to the “respective heads of state” of Turkey and Syria and in this way “to the Turkish and Syrian peoples”, who were hit this morning by an earthquake that destroyed buildings and caused about 1,500 deaths victims.
Asked about the lack of Portuguese casualties in the area of the earthquake, which hit southwestern Turkey, next to the border with Syria, the president of the republic replied that “so far the indication has been that the Portuguese authorities”.
“But, as you can imagine, qualifying is more difficult in Syria. And even in Turkey, in the south of Turkey. But so far the news I had did not point to any Portuguese” among the victims, said the Portuguese head of state.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border today and caused about 1,500 deaths was one of the strongest in the past 100 years.
The earthquake struck at 04:17 (01:17 in Lisbon), 33 kilometers from the provincial capital of Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, close to the border with Syria, at a depth of 17.9 kilometers.
The earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and dozens of aftershocks were felt, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Today’s earthquake was one of the strongest in 100 years, along with the earthquake that shook Erzincan, in eastern Turkey, on December 26, 1939, also measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. This earthquake in 1939 killed more than 32,000 people and caused a ‘tsunami’ in the Black Sea, about 100 miles from the epicenter.
The earthquake that caused the most deaths in the past 50 years, measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale, occurred on August 17, 1999 and its epicenter was in Izmir, in the northwest of the country, killing about 17,000 people , 500,000 homeless, 45,000 injured and 15 million affected.
The last quake that caused more than a hundred deaths in Turkey occurred on October 30, 2020, with a magnitude of 6.8 and an epicenter in the Aegean Sea, 60 kilometers south of the city of Izmir. A total of 115 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in Turkey and another two died on the Greek island of Samos.
Source: DN
