A magnitude 5.3 earthquake has caused panic this Saturday in the province of nigdea south central region of Turkey a few hundred kilometers west of the devastated region at the beginning of the month by several serious earthquakes.
The quake occurred at 10:27 GMT and could be felt in several neighboring provinces, reports the Turkish press, although there is still no information on possible damage.
Earthquakes between magnitudes 5 and 6 are relatively frequent in Turkey, which registers a dozen of this type of tremors a year, and normally do not cause major damage to homes or infrastructure.
The Turkish Seismographic Observatory kandilli located the epicenter of the tremor in bora municipality ten kilometers southwest of the provincial capital of nigdea city of 230,000 inhabitants south of cappadocia.
The region is about 200 kilometers west of the devastated areas due to the earthquakes of the past day 6, of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6which have caused more than 44,000 dead and nearly two million homeless.
Those extraordinarily strong tremors may have caused a readjustment of various tectonic plates that are manifested now in moderate earthquakes in neighboring areas, but do not make us foresee a new disaster of greater magnitude, he explained to the chain NTV the geophysicist Okan Tüysüz.
The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) stated that the death toll from the tremor in Turkey it amounted to 44,218 Friday night. And, with the recent balance of 5,914 dead in Syriathe combined number of fatalities in both countries exceeded 50,000.
On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) registered damage to 22 hospitals (fifteen in Turkey and seven in Syria). “We call on the international community to support this response and give hope to those who are now suffering, traumatized and with doubts about their future,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told a news conference. And he said that the situation of vulnerability of the health network in Syria is especially serious, given that the area has suffered more than a decade of armed conflict between the Bashar al Assad regime and the rebels.
The initial earthquake registered on February 6 and the aftershocks that followed have affected in one way or another about 9 million people in Syria, according to UN estimates.
According to Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, so far have been registered about 8,000 aftershocks from the first earthquakewhich had a magnitude of 7.4 on the open Richter scale.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) warned that the earthquakes registered in the last two weeks will have a “disastrous impact” on the Syrian economy.
“The earthquake will have a disastrous impact on the already dire economic and social conditions caused by the ongoing conflict, the covid-19 pandemic and a series of droughts, among many other factors. Consequently, more and more people will be vulnerable, poor and displaced,” the commission warned in a statement.
The economic situation has seriously worsened in Syria in the last three years and even before the recent tragedy 90% of the population lived in poverty, in the midst of strong inflation accelerated by the war in Ukraine and the measures against Russia, the main ally of the Al Assad regime.
(With information from EFE and Europa Press)
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Source-www.infobae.com