The south of Turkey was hit this Monday by a new earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale.
The information was provided by the United States Geological Survey and the European Mediterranean Seismological Center. According to the Turkish emergency agency AFAD, the epicenter of the earthquake was recorded in the Hatay region, in the city of Defne, at 8:04 p.m. local time (5:04 p.m. in Lisbon).
The new shock was felt strongly by Agence France-Presse (AFP) teams in Antakya and Adana, 200 kilometers north of the epicenter. An AFP journalist reported scenes of panic, adding that the fresh tremors raised clouds of dust in the city.
Ahmet Ovgun Ercan, a prestigious geophysicist from the Istanbul Technical University, assured the HalkTV station that this earthquake, which he estimated to last 17 seconds, is a normal phenomenon and anticipated that some already damaged buildings would have collapsed.
Since the earthquake on February 6, practically no building in Antaquia is habitable, but there are teams working to remove the rubble that could have been stranded by the landslides.
In addition, many survivors are in the habit of gathering around campfires in front of collapsed buildings to help identify bodies and may be at risk if a neighboring surviving building collapses.
“It was terrible, broken glass fell on us. Everyone left the shops in a panic. With the darkness you still can’t see what happened,” Ugur Sahin, a reporter for the BirGün newspaper, told Efe by phone.
The walls of the most damaged buildings have collapsed and several people are apparently injured.
According to the Reuters agency, the quake was felt in Egypt and Lebanon.
The region was hit on February 6 by a major earthquake and several aftershocks that killed at least 44,000 people and injured more than 100,000 in Turkey and Syria.
According to AFAD, there have been more than 6,000 aftershocks since the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria.
Source: TSF
