The 6.8-magnitude quake hit eastern Elazig province at 8.55 p.m. local time (1755GMT) on Friday, with its epicenter in Sivrice district, along with neighboring provinces and countries including Syria and Georgia.<\/p>\n
A person was rescued 12 hours after the earthquake hit the region, bringing the total number of rescued people to seven, local sources told Anadolu Agency.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said 782 others were injured; 433 in Elazig, 222 in Malatya, 37 in Kahramanmaras, 34 in Sanliurfa, 31 in Diyarbakir, 19 in Adiyaman, 6 in Batman.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced the updated death toll, saying: “We have approximately 30 residents under the wreckage in Elazig.”<\/p>\n
The search and rescue operations are continuing and the death toll could rise, said Koca.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the injured were transferred to hospitals and facilities have been opened to serve those who have been affected.<\/p>\n
Five buildings in Sivrice and 25 in Doganyol district of Malatya province were destroyed, said Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum.<\/p>\n
He also cautioned residents not to go into damaged buildings.<\/p>\n
The AFAD said some 228 aftershocks were felt following the powerful quake and that hundreds of tents, beds and thousands of blankets were dispatched to cities.<\/p>\n
The Turkish Red Crescent announced a crisis desk was set up in the capital Ankara and rescue teams were dispatched to earthquake-hit areas. Mobile kitchens, which serve up to 5,000 people, were sent to the region.<\/p>\n
National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said the army was ready to step into action if necessary.<\/p>\n
The quake was also felt in other provinces including Adana, Osmaniye, Tunceli, and Hatay. In addition, northern Syrian regions — including Idlib, Azaz, Al-Bab, Jarabulus, Afrin and Tal Abyad also felt tremors.<\/p>\n
This is not the first quake that hit Turkey in 2020. A 5.4-magnitude quake jolted western province of Manisa on Wednesday. And Ankara was rattled by a 4.5-magnitude quake Thursday.<\/p>\n
A total of 51 people were killed in 2010 when a 6.0-magnitude quake hit Elazig province.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Search and rescue efforts are underway after a deadly earthquake rattled eastern Turkey, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 1,015 others, according to authorities on Saturday. The 6.8-magnitude quake hit eastern Elazig province at 8.55 p.m. local time (1755GMT) on Friday, with its epicenter in Sivrice district, along with neighboring provinces and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,1,118,174,194,173,1165],"tags":[18439,78423,77182],"class_list":["post-64777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-turkey-daily","category-turkey-general","category-turkey-headlines","category-turkey-life","tag-earthquake-turkey","tag-suleyman-soylu","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}