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At least 15 dead in Turkey quake: officials

Locals officials said five people died in the province of Osmaniye and 10 more in Sanliurfa, which sits near Turkey's border with Syria.

Agencies
Istanbul, Turkey
Mon, February 6, 2023

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At least 15 dead in Turkey quake: officials In this video grab from AFP TV taken on February 6, 2023, rescuers search for victims of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, levelling buildings across several cities and causing damages in neighbouring Syria. (AFP/Mahmut BOZARSLAN)

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t least 15 people died in a major 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey on Monday, local officials said, although the toll threatened to climb much higher because many buildings were destroyed.

Locals officials said five people died in the province of Osmaniye and 10 more in Sanliurfa, which sits near Turkey's border with Syria.

Reuters reported at least 10 people were killed in Turkey after an earthquake shook the country's south and also northern Syria, two local Turkish officials said.

The German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said the quake struck at a depth of 10 km (6 miles) near the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, while the EMSC monitoring service said the chance of a tsunami risk was being evaluated. 

The quake struck at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometres (11 miles), the US agency said, with a 6.7-magnitude aftershock striking 15 minutes later.

Turkey's AFAD emergencies service centre put the first quake's magnitude at 7.4.

Turkish officials reported no immediate casualty figures, but the first images showed crumbled buildings and fires across several cities.

Images on Turkish television and social media showed rescuers digging through the rubble of levelled buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras and neighbouring Gaziantep.

"I convey my best wishes to all our citizens who were affected by the earthquake," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted.

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