208 days ago
208 days ago
"There are many people under the rubble," Veysel Keser, the mayor of the district of Celebibag, told NTV. "People are in agony. We can hear their screams for help."
Celebibag is near the hardest-hit area: Ercis an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border and on one of Turkey’s most earthquake-prone zones. The bustling city of Van, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of Ecris, also sustained substantial damage. The quake struck at 1:41 p.m. Sunday (1041 GMT; 6:41 a.m. EDT), the U.S. Geological Survey said.
What makes this quake particularly devastating is the area in which it occurred. The quake struck a region near where Turkey has been fighting with Kurdish rebels since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people in the country’s Kurdish-dominated southeast. On Saturday, airstrikes killed at least 35 Kurdish rebels along the border of Iraq and Turkey and roughly 80 people this week alone, the AP reports.
Our hearts and prayers go out to those affected by both the earthquake and the fighting and hope that those involved in the latter can take a moment to consider the brevity and fragility of life.
