A devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.9 was registered at 2.17 on the night between Sunday and Monday in the Gaziantep area, in southeastern Turkey, not far from the border with Syria .
The first earthquake was followed by several aftershocks, including another extremely violent shock of magnitude 7.5, and the tsunami warning was triggered throughout the Mediterranean , including for the Italian coasts.
The victims - according to the most recent toll - are 3,613: at least 1,297 in all of Syria, another 2,316 in Turkey. There are thousands of wounded, many missing too. And among these there would be an Italian.
The damage to the buildings was very heavy and "there is a potential for further collapses and numbers eight times higher than the provisional ones," said Catherine Smallwood, emergency manager of the WHO European office. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proclaimed 7 days of national mourning in Turkey .
The earthquake - a thousand times stronger than the one that struck Amatrice in 2016 and 30 times stronger than that of Irpinia in 1980 - was recorded all over the world and is also "by far the strongest event in have activated the tsunami warning system since it existed», said Alessandro Amato, seismologist and director of the Tsunami Center of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. The alarm for a possible tsunami, which in Italy concerned the regions of the South in particular, then returned around 7 in the morning. Again in Italy, the alert also led to the temporary interruption of railway traffic in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia.
The emergency machine was immediately activated both in Turkey and in Syria. Rescue teams are in action in the affected centers and together with the forces of order are digging through the rubble to recover the victims and look for survivors .
And international solidarity has also been set in motion. “A devastating earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria this morning, killing hundreds of people and injuring many more. Our thoughts are with the people of Turkey and Syria. The EU is ready to help," High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell wrote on Twitter.
«We have activated the EU civil protection mechanism. The EU Emergency Response Coordination Center is coordinating the deployment of rescue teams from Europe. Teams from the Netherlands and Romania are already on their way,” EU Crisis Commissioner Janez Lenarcic explained.
Solidarity and promises of help also from the Italian government and the White House.
Terremoto tra Turchia e Siria: centinaia di morti
(Unioneonline/lf)