Turkiye Earthquake: Shaken Three Times Very Strongly, Like A Baby In A Crib, Says Survivor

Turkey Earthquake: One of Turkey's largest earthquakes woke Erdem up at 04:17 local time while he was asleep at his home in Gaziantep, southern Turkey.

Syrian rescue teams look for survivors under the rubble after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in the government-controlled central Syrian city of Hama.

Source : AFP

New Delhi: As the death toll from one of the strongest earthquakes to strike the region in 100 years surpassed 1,000, rescue workers are racing to locate survivors trapped beneath rubble on either side of the Turkey-Syrian border, reported AFP. The 7.8-magnitude quake shook residents from their beds around 4 a.m. Monday, injuring thousands more and sending tremors as far away as Lebanon and Israel.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported that the quake's epicenter was 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) east of Nurdagi, in the Gaziantep province of Turkey, at a depth of 24.1 kilometers (14.9 miles).

One of Turkey's largest earthquakes woke Erdem up at 04:17 local time while he was asleep at his home in Gaziantep, southern Turkey.

"I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I've lived," he said quoted by BBC. "We were shaken at least three times very strongly, like a baby in a crib."

To get out of the damaged buildings, people went to their cars. "I imagine not a single person in Gaziantep is in their homes now," Erdem stated.

Nilüfer Aslan was certain that he and his family would die when the earthquake struck their fifth-floor apartment more than 130 miles to the west, in Adana.

"I have never seen anything like this in my life. We swayed for close to one minute," he said.

"[I said to my family] 'There is an earthquake, at least let's die together in the same place'... It was the only thing that crossed my mind."

When the quake paused, Aslan fled outside - "I couldn't take anything with me, I'm standing outside in slippers" - to find that four buildings surrounding his own had collapsed.

People rushed to the streets in Diyarbakir, 300 miles to the east, to assist rescuers.

"There was screaming everywhere," one 30-year-old man told Reuters. "I started pulling rocks away with my hands. We pulled out the injured with friends, but the screaming didn't stop. Then the [rescue] teams came."

Muhittin Orakci said that their family had lost seven members elsewhere in the city.

"My sister and her three children are there," he told AFP. "And also her husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law."

Aleppo, approximately two hours drive from the epicenter in Syria, saw a significant number of buildings collapse.

Following the disaster, the director of health Ziad Hage Taha stated that injured individuals are "arriving in waves."