Turkey, Syria Earthquake: Death toll rises over 4,000, 15,000 injured

The death toll in Turkey and in neighbouring northwest Syria following a major earthquake rose to more than 4,000, Associated Press reported. The magnitude 7.8 quake rippled through both countries early on Monday, toppling entire apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals, and leaving thousands more people injured or homeless. As rescue operations continued, freezing winter weather hampered search efforts for survivors through the night. Temperatures fell close to freezing overnight, worsening conditions for people trapped under rubble or left homeless, news agency Reuters reported. 

The earthquake, which was followed by a series of aftershocks, was the biggest recorded worldwide by the US Geological Survey since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.Researchers said the earthquake was a strike-slip quake, where two tectonic plates slide past each other horizontally. The Earth is divided up into different pieces, “kind of like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Eric Sandvol, a seismologist at the University of Missouri. Those pieces meet at fault lines, where the plates usually grind against each other slowly. But once enough tension builds up, they can snap past each other quickly, releasing a large amount of energy. In this case, one plate moved west while the other moved east — jerking past each other to create the quake, Hatem said. Over time, aftershocks will start to die down and become less frequent, Sandvol said. Rescue workers and civilians passed chunks of concrete and household goods across mountains of wreckage early Monday, moving tons of wreckage by hand in a desperate search for survivors trapped by a devastating earthquake. “Can anyone hear me?” shouted rescuers trying to find people in the province of Kahramanmaras, the epicenter. In some places around Turkey, survivors could be heard screaming from beneath collapsed buildings.