Videos of rescue teams scrambling to find survivors trapped under debris in Turkey flooded social media after the middle eastern country and Syria were rocked by two massive earthquakes on Monday, leaving over 1,500 people dead. Videos from Turkey showed rescue workers searching for survivors through tangles of metal and concrete amid rows of collapsed buildings in the background.
A video tweeted by Anadolu Agency shows a team pulling out a young girl trapped under a heap of rubble in Turkey's southeastern Sanliurfa province. The team is then seen carrying the girl, covered in dust, to get medical treatment.
The first earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck early morning on Monday in south-eastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, as people slept. Hours later, a second quake, which had a magnitude of 7.5, hit the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras province in Turkey.
Tremors were felt as far away as Lebanon, Greece, Israel and the island of Cyprus.
Thousands more were injured as the quake reduced entire sections of major cities into rubble. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said over 900 people were killed, 5,383 injured, and 2,818 buildings had collapsed.
In neighboring Syria, at least 592 people have died, mostly in the regions of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus, according to Syrian state news agency SANA, which also reported 1,089 injuries.
The toll is expected to rise as rescue workers searched frantically for survivors under the debris of crushed buildings in cities on both sides of the border.
READ | Second Earthquake Strikes Turkey And Syria As Toll From First Tremor Rises To 1,500
"I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I've lived. We were shaken at least three times very strongly, like a baby in a crib," said one survivor in Gaziantep, southern Turkey, to BBC.
Nearly 1,000 search and rescue volunteers have been deployed from Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, along with dogs, trucks and aid, CNN quoted Istanbul governor Ali Yerlikaya as saying.
Offers of help -- from search-and-rescue teams to medical supplies and financial aid -- poured in from dozens of countries, including India as well as the European Union and NATO.
The earthquake is believed to be the strongest to hit Turkey since 1939, when a temblor of the same magnitude killed 30,000 people, according to the USGS.