Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu announced the death of three citizens as a result of new earthquakes that occurred in the province of Hatay. This was reported on February 20 by the Turkish TV channel Haber 7.
“After the earthquake, we received information that 3 of our citizens were killed, one in Antakya, one in Defne and one in Samandag,” Soylu said on the air.
He also said that 213 people were injured and sent to hospitals for medical care. Search and rescue operations are underway at three locations.
Earlier in the day, a new earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck on the Turkish-Syrian border. Tremors were recorded at 17:04 (20:04 Moscow time) on the territory of Turkish Antakya, 75 km from Syrian Latakia. The source lay at a depth of 2 km.
Turkish authorities later indicated that at least two earthquakes had been recorded. The first with a magnitude of 6.4 is in the province of Hatay. The tremors were also felt in the surrounding provinces. Then another earthquake of magnitude 5.8 occurred in Samandag (Khatai).
It also became known that the highway between the cities of Antakya and Iskenderun collapsed due to the earthquake.
In addition, the Turkish Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) warned of the risk of rising water in the sea in the Hatay region up to 50 cm due to two new earthquakes. In this regard, citizens were asked not to approach the sea in this province.
The Al-Arabiya TV channel also reported that buildings collapsed in two cities in Syria due to earthquakes in neighboring Turkey. There are wounded.
Earlier, devastating earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred on February 6 in the Turkish province of Kahramanmarash in the southeast of the country near the Syrian border. According to the latest data, the death toll in the earthquake in Turkey has reached 41,156 people, in Syria, more than 5,800 people died.
As Vladimir Kosobokov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to Izvestia on February 17, the seismic hazard of the region is due to a large number of faults, since a very active North Anatolian fault passes here. At the same time, he said that calling the recent earthquakes in the country’s southeast a “rehearsal” for the disaster in Istanbul is “quite irresponsible.”
