Earthquake in Turkey and Greece: the death toll now stands at 49 dead

 

Two days after a violent earthquake in Turkey and Greece, the Turkish government agency for disaster situations (AFAD) published a new report on Sunday 1is November: 49 people died and 896 were injured in this earthquake which also killed two teenagers in Greece. The earthquake, whose magnitude was evaluated at 7 on the Richter scale by the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS) and 6.6 by the Turkish authorities, occurred Friday afternoon in the Aegean Sea, in the south -west of Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city, and near the Greek island of Samos.

In Bayrakli, the most affected Turkish city, rescuers continued to search the rubble of eight collapsed buildings on Sunday, according to Afad. Several dozen of them were trying to clear one of these sites, amid a deafening din of excavators and jackhammers and under the worried eyes of relatives of the missing, according to a correspondent for Agence France-Presse. A rescuer said at least ten people could still be stranded under the rubble of this building. In the night, a man was uprooted alive from the rubble, 33 hours after the earthquake, according to media.

The fear of aftershocks

Two days after the earthquake, fatigue and pain spread over the faces of the inhabitants who were numerous to spend a second night outside, for fear of aftershocks. Tents were set up to house families, and volunteers distributed soup to warm them.

The earthquake was so powerful that it was felt as far as Istanbul and Athens and triggered a mini-tsunami that flooded the streets of Seferihisar, a Turkish town near the epicenter, and swept the coast of the island. Greek from Samos. In Samos, two people were killed and extensive material damage was noted, according to the Greek authorities.

Faced with this disaster, Turkey and Greece, two countries located in one of the most active seismic regions in the world, put diplomatic tensions aside, saying they were ready to help each other. The earthquake also aroused fears of a major earthquake threatening Istanbul, according to experts. In 1999, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck northwestern Turkey, killing more than 17,000, including a thousand in Istanbul.

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