Turkey hit by another 5.5 magnitude earthquake weeks after last one killed 48,000
Nearly 48,000 people died in southern Turkey and northern Syria two and a half weeks ago after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake ripped open the land and devastated hundreds of thousands of residences.
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Turkey has been hit again by a powerful earthquake as the country is still frantically trying to recover from the devastation of the last natural disaster. A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck central Turkey at 10.27am local time today, just days after two further quakes hit the border near Syria. The alarm of a 10km-deep quake was raised by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre on Saturday morning.
The latest earthquake is said to have occurred 40 kilometres south of the city of Aksaray.
The break point took place in the Nigde province, according to India Today, which is almost 230 miles from Gaziantep, where the 7.8-magnitude quake struck earlier this month.
Collapsed buildings and heaps of rubble were also photographed in the Golbasi district, worsening the toll taken to Turkey's infrastructure.
Around 173,000 buildings were already in ruins as a result of the last month of disaster. The death toll from this latest quake is not yet known.
Turkey Syria Earthquake Caused 300 km Long Crack in Earth’s Crust#turkeyearthquake2023 #earthquake#TurkeySyriaEarthquake2023 Turkey-Syria pic.twitter.com/55PIDDmOax
— Ankita Jain (@Ankita20200) February 20, 2023
It comes as investigations have been launched against more than 600 people in relation to the collapsing of buildings, according to a government official.
Justice minister Bekir Bozdag said 184 of the 612 suspects had been jailed pending trial. Those in custody include construction contractors and building owners or managers, he said in televised comments from a coordination centre in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey.
“The detection of evidence in the buildings continues as a basis for criminal investigation,” Mr Bozdag added.
The aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude quake on February 6, which led to nearly 48,000 deaths in southern Turkey and northern Syria, has seen Turks question the structural integrity of many of the 173,000 buildings that collapsed or were seriously damaged.
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Experts have said many toppled structures were built with inferior materials and methods and often did not comply with government standards.
Opposition parties have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration of failing to enforce building regulations.
The mayor of a town close to the epicentre of the earthquake was detained as part of an investigation into collapsed buildings, the Cumhuriyet newspaper and other outlets reported Saturday.
Okkes Kavak, who heads the district of Nurdagi in Gaziantep province and is a member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), is said to have failed to ensure construction inspections were carried out.
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After the major earthquake of Feb 6, several sinkholes formed in Turkey
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 25, 2023
This one was discovered in Konya, Karapınar district, on Feb 24 after a M4.3 earthquake: it has a diameter of 37 meters and a depth of 12 meters
[read more: https://t.co/RXpiPW5cA3]pic.twitter.com/hAobfPlZvs
AFAD, Turkey’s disaster management agency, said that 9,470 aftershocks had hit the region affected by the quake.
“This will continue for a long time… we expect these aftershocks to last for at least two years,” AFAD General Manager Orhan Tatar said in a media briefing in Ankara.
He said a 5.3-magnitude quake that hit Bor, a town around 150 miles (about 245 kilometres) west of the February 6 epicentre, was considered “independent” of earlier temblors.
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