Over 1,700 people have now been confirmed dead in Turkey and Syria after two large earthquakes
Turkey has raised the official death toll from the earthquakes to 1,121, Reuters reports, citing the country’s emergency AFAD disaster agency.
Syria’s health ministry said earlier that more than 326 people had been killed and 1,042 injured.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) has put the death toll in the areas of north-west Syria that the government does not control at 255 killed and 811 injured.
The first quake struck as people slept overnight, and measured magnitude 7.8, one of the most powerful quakes in the region in at least a century. It was felt as far away as Cyprus and Cairo. The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said preliminary data showed the second large quake measured 7.7 magnitude, and was 67km (42 miles) north-east of Kahramanmaraş.
In 1999, a tremor of similar magnitude to today’s quakes in Turkey devastated Izmit killing more than 17,000. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip, Erdoğan has described it as the worst disaster for the country since 1939, when an earthquake killed more than 32,000 people and injured more than 100,000.
