At least 22 dead in the east of the country

At least 22 people have been killed and more than a thousand injured by a powerful earthquake that struck eastern Turkey, where relief workers extracted the first survivors from collapsed buildings on Saturday.

AFAD said at least 30 aftershocks were subsequently recorded and that more than 400 rescue teams had been sent to the site. At least 22 people have been killed and 1,200 have been injured, according to AFAD’s latest report.

The population in shock

At least thirty people were reported stranded in the rubble since the violent 6.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred on Friday in the district of Sivrice, in the province of Elazig.

On Twitter, AFAD, the government disaster agency, said early on Saturday that five survivors had so far been taken from crumbling buildings. Among these survivors is a pregnant woman who spent a dozen hours under the rubble, according to the state agency Anadolu. An Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent on site saw a rescue team evacuate an injured man from the debris of a five-story building that collapsed in Elazig.

In the freezing cold of the street, some residents lit fires for warmth during the night. “It was scary, the furniture fell on us. We rushed outside, ”Melahat Can, 47, from Elazig, told AFP. “We’re going to spend the next few days on a farm outside of town.”

Rescuers at work

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that “all necessary measures” would be taken to come to the aid of the areas hit by the earthquake and that he had dispatched several ministers there. “With all our institutions, including AFAD and the Red Crescent, we stand alongside our people,” he tweeted. In solidarity with the victims, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the funeral in Elazig of a mother and her son killed in the earthquake. He then traveled to the Mustafa Pasa neighborhood, where two apartment buildings collapsed, saying the state would do “everything in its power” to help residents.

Sports halls, schools and libraries have opened to accommodate people who fled their homes after the earthquake, authorities said. Turkish television broadcast images of panicked residents rushing outside buildings, and at least one building with a roof on fire. It also showed images of rescuers looking for possible survivors in the rubble of a building.

Turkey, a privileged zone for earthquakes

Turkey, located in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world, is frequently affected by earthquakes.

In 1999, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the northwest of the country, killing more than 17,000, including a thousand in Istanbul. The last powerful earthquake to hit Turkey (7.1 on the Richter scale) occurred in 2011 in the province of Van (east), killing more than 600.

In September, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Istanbul, the country’s economic capital. Experts estimate that a major earthquake can affect this city of more than 15 million inhabitants at any time, where the habitat, often anarchic, is only rarely up to earthquake-resistant standards.