ANTAKYA: A 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit the Turkey-Syria border late on Monday night, causing panic and damage to buildings in Turkey’s Antakya city two weeks after the worst earthquake in the country’s modern history killed tens of thousands of people.
Two people who spoke to Reuters said they felt a strong earthquake and saw more damage to buildings in the centre of Antakya, where the quake was centred. Reuters reporters said it was also felt in Egypt and Lebanon.
The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said that the earthquake happened 2 kilometres below the surface (1.2 miles).
Other people who saw what happened said that Turkish rescue teams were running around after the latest earthquake to make sure no one was hurt.
Muna Al Omar, who lives in Antakya, said that when the earthquake hit, she was in a tent in a park in the city’s centre.
She was crying as she held her seven-year-old son and said, “I thought the ground was going to open up under me.”
She asked, “Is there going to be another one?”
The two big earthquakes that happened on February 6, which also shook neighbouring Syria, forced more than a million people out of their homes and killed a lot more than the 46,000 people who were officially counted as dead in both countries.