DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: In the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, residents were hoping and praying for news of relatives and friends after a massive earthquake and a huge aftershock turned apartment blocks into mounds of rubble and piles of shattered masonry.
With emergency services and rescuers already on the scene after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck, other buildings were brought down in the 7.7 magnitude aftershock, pancaking in plumes of dust to the gasps and screams of onlookers.
“My nephew is under the rubble, with his wife and kids,” Ahmet Budak told Reuters after he had rushed towards their building. “We cannot reach around 30 people in total.”
“We are waiting with hope, God willing we will get good news,” he said in Diyarbakir, a city of 1.2 million where at least 20 buildings crumbled in the powerful tremor even though the city lies 270km from the quake’s epicentre.
For Hasan Sancar, who ran into the street with his family when he felt the earthquake, the lack of contact was ominous.
“We called our relatives and when we could not reach someone, we were scared. There are acquaintances under the rubble right now,” he said.
More than 2,400 people have been killed and thousands more injured in Turkey and northwest Syria.
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