Daily Sabah/Anadolu Agency – February 7, 2023
Death toll from deadly quakes in Türkiye surpasses 5,800
The death toll from the deadly earthquakes in Türkiye surpassed 5,800, Vice President Fuat Oktay said Tuesday. The number of people injured in the disaster hit 34,810, Oktay said in a news conference.
Over 450,000 people have been sheltering in student dormitories, he added.
In an earlier news conference, Orhan Tatar, head of Directorate of Earthquake and Risk Reduction said at least 435 aftershocks happened after the two major quakes.
Some 60,217 emergency officials are working in the area, including 3,200 personnel from 65 countries, Tatar said.
Recent earthquakes in Türkiye, Syria could affect up to 23M, says WHO
Monday's powerful earthquakes that rocked souteastern Türkiye and Syria could affect up to 23 million people, including 1.4 million children, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) estimate on Tuesday.
Türkiye had a strong capacity to tackle the crisis that emerged following the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes that shook its southern provinces, WHO's senior emergencies officer Adelheid Marschang told the U.N. health agency's executive committee earlier in Geneva.
UNESCO raises concern over quake damage to heritage in Türkiye, Syria
UNESCO, the UN's cultural organization, announced on Tuesday that it is prepared to offer support after two World Heritage sites in Syria and Türkiye, which are listed on its registry, were severely damaged after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck the countries, the epicenter of which is the Pazarcık district of Kahramanmaraş.
As well as the damage to the old city of Syria's Aleppo and the fortress in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır, UNESCO said at least three other World Heritage sites could be affected.
In Türkiye, UNESCO said it was saddened by the "collapse of several buildings" at the World Heritage site of the Diyarbakir Fortress and the adjacent Hevsel Gardens. The statement by UNESCO emphasized that the entire area was an essential center of the Roman, Sassanid, Byzantine, Islamic, and Ottoman periods.
With weather and the remote nature of the areas making access and information hard to come by, UNESCO said other sites on the World Heritage list not far from the epicenter could be affected.
It said these included the famed Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in Şanlıurfa province, home to the world's oldest known megaliths, some 10,000 years old.
UNESCO is also concerned about the Nemrut Dağ site, one of Türkiye's most iconic attractions because of the giant statues that are part of an ancient royal tomb erected high on a mountain.
The third site is the neo-Hittite archaeological site of Arslantepe outside Malatya, a city also severely hit by the earthquake.
The statement by UNESCO also said it was "particularly concerned" about the old city of Aleppo, which has been on its list of World Heritage in Danger since 2013 due to the Syrian civil war.
"Significant damage has been noted in the citadel. The western tower of the old city wall has collapsed, and several buildings in the souks have been weakened," it said.
Earthquakes in Türkiye moved Anatolia up to 10 meters: Seismologist
An Italian seismologist said the Anatolian continent moved up to 10 meters (around 33 feet) following two powerful earthquakes that shook Türkiye's southeast on Monday.
Speaking to Italy's state-run ANSA news agency on Tuesday, Alessandro Amato of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), said that the earthquakes activated a new fault line on the border between Türkiye and Syria, which caused a displacement of the ground up to 10 meters.
"There was a trans-current movement," he said, adding that the ground slipped horizontally along the two edges of the fault line with an orientation to the left, in the direction of the Aegean Sea.
Separately, Tina Larsen, a senior researcher with the National Geological Surveys of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), said the tremors from the earthquake were felt in Denmark and Greenland, according to Greenland KNR broadcaster.
"When such a powerful earthquake occurs, the tremors travel underground from the area where the displacement has occurred, through the solid earth and out into the whole world," she said.
|
Published since July 2008 |
Your donation
is tax deductable.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
