ANKARA, February 7. /TASS/. The number of people killed by two earthquakes in Turkey has reached 3,381, Orhan Tatar, General Director for Earthquake Risk Reduction at the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, said in a televised statement on Tuesday.
"As of this moment, 3,381 people have been killed and 20,426 have suffered injuries. As many as 5,775 buildings have been destroyed and damage to another 11,000 buildings has been reported," he specified.
According to Tatar, 285 tremors have been recorded in Turkey since the quake first struck, with magnitudes ranging from 3 and 6.
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit Turkey’s southeastern province of Kahramanmaras on Monday. The quake was followed by almost 150 aftershocks, which were felt in ten regions of Turkey, as well as in neighboring countries, including Syria. The Turkish authorities announced that over 7,300 people had been saved from the rubble in the first 20 hours after the first quake. However, cold weather, rain and snowfall are complicating search and rescue efforts.
Another earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 struck central Turkey in the early hours of Tuesday, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center reported. According to the facility, the epicenter was 13 kilometers northeast of the town of Besni, population of about 41,800, at a depth of 10 kilometers.