Another Fresh quake hits Turky-Syria border area
Another earthquake struck the border region of Turkey and Syria on Monday, just two weeks after the area was devastated by a larger quake that killed more than 47,000 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes.
Monday’s quake, this time with a magnitude of 6.3, was centered near the southern Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon.
It struck at a depth of just two kilometers (1.2 miles), the European Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) said, potentially magnifying its impact at ground level.
Muna Al Omar said she was in a tent in a park in central Antakya when the latest quake hit.
“I thought the earth was going to split under my feet,” she said, crying as she held her 7-year-old son in her arms.
Hours earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on a visit to Turkiye that Washington would help “for as long as it takes” as rescue operations in the wake of the Feb. 6 earthquake and its aftershocks were winding down and focus turned to toward urgent shelter and reconstruction work.
Two weeks ago, the death toll from the quakes rose to 41,156 in Turkiye, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority AFAD said on Monday. It was thought it would go up even more since 385,000 apartments had been destroyed or badly damaged, and many people were still missing.
President Tayyip Erdogan said construction work on nearly 200,000 apartments in 11 earthquake-hit provinces of Turkey would begin next month.
Total US humanitarian assistance to support the earthquake response in Turkey and Syria has reached $185 million, the US State Department said.
The UN agency for sexual and reproductive health (UNFPA) says that about 356,000 pregnant women who survived the earthquakes must get to a doctor immediately.
They include 226,000 women in Turkey and 130,000 in Syria, about 38,800 of whom will deliver in the next month. Many were sheltering in camps or exposed to freezing temperatures and struggling to get food or clean water.
