The violent earthquake that hit southeastern Turkey on Monday killed nearly 7,000 people while the number of injured exceeded 38,000, the Turkish Disaster Management Agency (Afad) announced on Wednesday.
The updated report shows 6,957 dead and 38,224 injured, just over 48 hours after the disaster, according to data provided by the Turkish Agency during its morning press conference in Ankara.
To this end, the Turkish Presidency indicated that the Head of State, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would go to the earthquake zone today for an inspection tour.
For his part, the Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, announced the opening of all the military barracks located in the earthquake zones to those affected, recalling that the Turkish Armed Forces had sent more than 200 field hospitals to the impacted areas. .
The earthquake, which occurred Monday at 04:17 local time (01:17 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers, caused the collapse of several buildings in the Turkish localities of “Kahramanmaraş”, “Gaziantep”, “Adana”, “Malatya”, “Diyarbakir”, “Sanliurfa” and “Osmaniye”.
Twelve hours after this first violent tremor, another earthquake struck north of the city of Gaziantep with almost the same intensity and near the epicenter of the first earthquake, which worsened the toll of the disaster.
So far, 684 tremors have been recorded in the area, authorities said. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared official mourning for a period of seven days and a state of emergency in the affected areas for a period of three months.
In neighboring Syria, which also suffered the repercussions of the terrible earthquake, in particular in Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama and Tartous, the number of victims rose to more than 2,000 dead and nearly 4,000 injured.