Turkey

ANKARA, February 7. /TASS/: More than 13 million people have been affected by the devastating earthquake in Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday.

"The earthquake has caused colossal damage. It was the biggest-ever calamity not only in our country’s history but in the history of the entire world," he told local television channels.

ANKARA, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces of Türkiye hit by massive quakes.

The decision is taken in order to ensure that search and rescue activities and subsequent studies can be carried out quickly, he said at a press conference.

Death tolls from Monday's powerful earthquakes in southern Türkiye rose to 3,549, Erdogan added.

A total of 53,317 search and rescue staff and support personnel are currently working in the earthquake zones, according to the president.

ADANA, Turkey (AP) — Rescuers raced Tuesday to find survivors in the rubble of thousands of buildings brought down by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and multiple aftershocks that struck eastern Turkey and neighboring Syria, with the discovery of more bodies raising the death toll to more than 5,000.

06 Feb 2023; MEMO: Turkiye has experienced the "biggest disaster" in the last century after the 1939 Erzincan earthquake, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after a strong earthquake hit southern provinces on Monday morning, claiming the lives of at least 912 people, Anadolu News Agency reports.

"Tonight at 04:17, we were shaken by the biggest disaster since the 1939 Erzincan earthquake that we underwent in the last century," Erdogan said in the capital, Ankara.

06 Feb 2023; MEMO: Arab countries, on Monday, dispatched rescue teams to Turkiye following a deadly earthquake that killed hundreds and injured thousands, Anadolu News Agency reports.

A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck south-eastern Turkiye early Monday, killing at least 1,498 people and injuring 7,634 others, according to the country's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).

Huge crowds of people have gathered in Istanbul Airport to volunteer in southeast Turkiye to help in the aftermath of the earthquakes.

They hope to join over 24,000 search and rescue firefighters, doctors, soldiers and civilians who are searching the rubble for survivors.

In the early hours of yesterday morning northern Syria and southern Turkiye were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, followed by a second just hours later.

ADANA, Turkey (AP) — Rescuers in Turkey and war-ravaged Syria searched through the frigid night into Tuesday, hoping to pull more survivors from the rubble after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 4,000 people and toppled thousands of buildings across a wide region.

Authorities feared the death toll from Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake and aftershocks would keep climbing as rescuers looked for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.

06 Feb 2023; MEMO: Military delegations from Turkiye, Syria and Russia will hold a meeting this month in the context of developing the tripartite dialogue that began at the end of last year, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said.

Akar told the Turkish newspaper Sozcu yesterday that technical delegations from the three countries' ministries of defence and intelligence will meet as part of the dialogue. No details as to the exact date for the meeting were given.

06 Feb 2023; MEMO: At least 500 people have been killed in Turkiye and Syria after an earthquake shook the countries. Thousands more were left injured.

The German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said the quake struck at a depth of ten kilometres near the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, while the EMSC monitoring service said the chance of a tsunami risk was being evaluated.

ANKARA, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Six people were killed and 36 others injured on Sunday in a traffic accident in the western Turkish province of Afyonkarahisar, Demiroren News Agency reported.

A passenger bus overturned after the driver lost control of the bus in Karabedir village of Dinar district, the report said.

The bus was traveling from the southeastern province of Diyarbakir to the Bodrum district of the southwestern province of Mugla, it added.

Several rescue teams were dispatched to the scene after the accident.