Istanbul: At least 3400 people were killed in Turkey after an earthquake shook the country’s south and also northern Syria, two local Turkish officials said.
The German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said the quake struck at a depth of 10 km (6 miles) near the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, while the EMSC monitoring service said the chance of a tsunami risk was being evaluated.
Local officials said several people died in the province of Osmaniye and many more in Sanliurfa, which sits near Turkey’s border with Syria.
Governor Erdinc Yilmaz said that 34 buildings were destroyed in the province.
The quake struck at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometres (11 miles). According to AFAD, the government’s disaster management agency, the quake’s magnitude was 7.4.