A new earthquake in Turkey kills 1 and injures 110

[ad_1]

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Turkey on Monday, killing one person, injuring at least 110, and causing a number of already damaged buildings to collapse.

The new quake came three weeks after a 7.8-magnitude tremor struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 50,000 people.

Turkish authorities said rescue teams were deployed immediately on Monday to rescue people from the rubble. A father and daughter were trapped under the rubble of a four-storey building they entered in the town of Yesliurt to retrieve their belongings after the previous earthquake rescued them.

Yesliurt, in Malatya province, was the epicenter of Monday’s earthquake.

Yunus Sezer, head of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), said search and rescue teams have been deployed to five buildings.

The region has experienced four earthquakes in the past three weeks, as well as more than 10,000 aftershocks, according to AFAD’s director general of Earthquake Management and Risk Reduction, Orhan Tatar.

The earthquakes are expected to have an impact on the upcoming elections in Turkey. Incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is running for another term and faces what is expected to be a tough election in June.

Critics accuse the government of being too slow to respond to the initial emergency, and opposition parties say Erdogan’s government is responsible for the scale of the disaster by failing to enforce building regulations.

At a press conference on Monday, Erdogan acknowledged that his government’s response is considered by many to be insufficient.

“In the early days, we couldn’t do the work as efficiently as we wanted [the hard-hit town of] Erdogan said Adiyaman is due to reasons such as the devastating impact of earthquakes, bad weather and challenges due to damaged infrastructure.

The president said that the rebuilding work of 309,000 damaged homes will begin soon. In March and April, he said, construction of 234,000 new homes will also begin, while infrastructure, medical centers and parks will also be built.

During the massive February 6 earthquake, 173,000 buildings in Turkey collapsed or were severely damaged, making it the worst disaster in the country’s modern history.

After this latest earthquake, the Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD) issued a warning on Twitter asking people not to enter or stand near damaged buildings in the earthquake zone.

Some of the information for this report came from Reuters and the Associated Press.

[ad_2]