The death toll from a massive 7.8-magnitude overnight earthquake that struck north of a provincial capital in south-central Turkey continued to climb Monday, with at least 1,300 dead and hundreds more feared trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, the Associated Press reports.
People were forced outdoors in the middle of the night amid snow and freezing rain by the quake and a 6.6-magnitude aftershock that struck just hours later. The quake was just another hardship imposed on a region ravaged by Syria’s long-running civil war, with an estimated 4 million refugees having fled over the border into Turkey during the now more than decade-old conflict.
UPDATE 2/6/2023 5:55 AM EST: A second 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Kahramanmaras province, to the north of the earlier 7.8-magnitude quake, at 1:24 PM local time on Monday.