3 dead, over 600 injured after new quake hits Turkey
Darpan News Desk IANS, 21 Feb, 2023 12:56 PM
Ankara, Feb 21 (IANS) Three people are now confirmed to have died after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey on Monday, weeks after a deadly quake devastated the region.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu also said 213 people had been injured.
Turkey's disaster and emergency agency Afad said the tremor occurred at 20:04 local time (17:04 GMT), the BBC reported.
A 7.8-magnitude quake struck the same area on February 6, killing more than 44,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
Those killed by Monday's tremor were found in Antakya, Defne, and Samandagi, Soylu said, urging people not to enter potentially dangerous buildings.
Turkish authorities have recorded more than 6,000 aftershocks since the February 6 earthquake hit, but the BBC's team in the region said the latest tremor felt much stronger than previous ones.
Monday's earthquake hit near the Turkey-Syria border, and the White Helmets civil defence group said more than 100 people were injured in Syria, with buildings collapsing and widespread panic, the BBC reported.
The Syrian American Medical Society Foundation said that five of its hospitals received at least 30 people with injuries from the latest earthquake, but added that damage to its medical facilities "appears to be minimal".
The earthquake was also reportedly felt in Egypt and Lebanon.
There is fear and panic in Turkey as small aftershocks keep coming. Lines of ambulances and rescue crews are trying to get to some of the worst affected areas where the walls of badly damaged buildings have collapsed.
A number of structures that were left standing after the tremor on February 6 have now crumbled, including a bridge. Many cracks in roads have become deep scars making it more difficult for the emergency services to get where they may be needed.
An AFP journalist reported on scenes of panic in Antakya, the capital of Hatay province which was already devastated by the previous earthquake -- with the latest tremors raising clouds of dust in the city.
The walls of badly damaged buildings also crumbled, AFP reports, with several apparently injured people calling for help.
In a tweet, Afad initially urged people to stay away from coastlines as a precaution against the risk of rising sea levels, although the warning was later removed.
A contingent of persons from the Hindu and Sikh communities who are stranded in Afghanistan were provided reassurance of safety by the Taliban, media reports said. Over 300 Hindus and Sikhs are reportedly taking shelter at the Karte Parwan Gurudwara in Kabul.
We need humanitarian supplies. The refugee situation we updated you with last week and the week before has only deteriorated. We have 300,000 internal refugees and 80,000 children who are without shelter and food. Where we were short of supplies, now we are out.
Nikita Ishchenko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Kabul, was quoted as saying by RIA: "Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac."
Fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents can now enter Canada for non-essential purposes for the first time since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the two countries to severely curtail travel.
One person was killed and another injured during a shooting which took place in the parking lot of a store in the US state of Pennsylvania, authorities said.
Six Sikhs were killed in the August 5, 2012, attack in which four people, including a police officer, were injured and one person died last year from the wounds sustained in the shooting.
