Türkiye declared seven days of national mourning after catastrophic earthquakes and 145 aftershocks devastated the country’s southeastern provinces, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday.
In a message posted on his official Twitter account, the president said the country has declared a week of mourning and will lower its flags to half-mast at home and at diplomatic missions across the world until Feb. 12, 2023.
At least 2,316 people were killed while 13,293 others were injured following magnitudes 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes with an epicenter in Kahramanmaraş province devastated 10 provinces in the country’s southeast.
Tremors from the earthquake that rocked Türkiye and neighboring Syria on Monday were felt as far away as Greenland, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said.
Monday’s quake is the deadliest in Turkey since a 7.4-magnitude one in 1999 when more than 17,000 people died, including about 1,000 in Istanbul.
Tremors from massive Türkiye quake felt as far away as Greenland
Tremors from the powerful earthquake that rocked Türkiye and neighboring Syria on Monday were felt as far away as Greenland, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said.
“The large earthquakes in Turkey were clearly registered on the seismographs in Denmark and Greenland,” seismologist Tine Larsen told AFP.
The first 7.8-magnitude quake struck at 04:17 a.m. (01:17 a.m. GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers (11 miles) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is home to around 2 million people, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
“The waves from the earthquake reached the seismograph on the Danish island of Bornholm approximately five minutes after the shaking started,” Larsen said.
“Eight minutes after the earthquake, the shaking reached the east coast of Greenland, propagating further through all of Greenland,” she added.
Later, another 7.5-magnitude quake struck southeastern Turkey.
“We have registered both earthquakes – and a lot of aftershocks – in Denmark and Greenland,” she said.
Monday’s quake is the deadliest in Turkey since a 7.4-magnitude one in 1999 when more than 17,000 people died, including about 1,000 in Istanbul.
Source Daily Sabah