The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday (6) damaged the 2,200-year-old Turkish castle of Gaziantepe. The city was the epicenter of the quake.
Part of the construction, which is located in the central district of Şahinbey, in the southeast of the country, collapsed in the early hours of this Monday morning – Sunday night (5) in Brazil –, according to the local branch of CNN. Anadolu news agency reported that the earthquake knocked down the iron railings around the castle, leaving it with a destroyed wall and large cracks.
The castle, built on the Kudret hill, is around 25 meters high. The work is the result of an expansion, between 527 and 565, of a watchtower made in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD
Another historic building, which stood next to the castle, was also damaged. The dome and a wall of the Şirvani Mosque, built in the 17th century, were partially destroyed.
At least 912 people died in Turkey, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the worst earthquake in the country since 1939. In Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has more than 339 victims. There are also 221 dead in rebel-held northwest Syria, according to rescuers.
Also according to Erdogan, more than 5,000 people were injured and at least 2,818 buildings collapsed amid the quake. In Syria, the number of wounded reached 1,087, according to an adviser to the Ministry of Health. Hundreds of victims are still in the rubble, and the numbers of dead and wounded could rise. The tremors could be felt in the Turkish capital, Ankara, in Cyprus, in Lebanon and also in Iraq.
The first earthquake occurred at 4:17 am (22:17 in Brasilia), and images on social networks soon showed the immediate effects of the tragedy, with the collapse of buildings. The transmission of the state TV network TRT showed residents taking to the streets under snow to assess the damage in some places, as well as occurred in Damascus, where reports reported landslides in the cities of Aleppo and Hama.
There were also secondary earthquakes, about ten minutes after the first, with magnitudes that reached 6.7, according to the Associated Press news agency. Witnesses told Reuters news agency that the tremor lasted about a minute.
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