BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 8. Measures are being continued to provide assistance to Azerbaijani citizens affected by the devastating earthquake in the southern provinces of Türkiye, Trend reports citing the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.
The operational headquarters, established in the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Türkiye and consulates general, responds to and investigates hundreds of appeals received by hotline numbers.
Based on the received data, lists of affected citizens of Azerbaijan are compiled. In this regard, cooperation is being carried out with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education of Türkiye, the Council of Higher Education and other state institutions of this country.
The process of evacuation of our citizens to Azerbaijan also continues. In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the evacuation process, a group of employees of the embassy and the Office of the Military Attaché at the embassy was sent to the earthquake zone.
On Feb. 7, 2023, 205 Azerbaijani citizens and their family members who are citizens of foreign countries were sent by land transport through Georgia to Azerbaijan on five buses from 12 provinces affected by the earthquake.
“Today, it’s planned to evacuate most of our citizens, and appropriate measures are being taken for this,” the Foreign Ministry added.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 has hit southeastern Türkiye on Feb. 6, 2023. The earthquake occurred at a depth of seven kilometers in the Pazarcik region of Kahramanmaras Province. The provinces of Hatay, Gaziantep, Kilis, Osmaniye, Malatya, Adiyaman, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Adana and Kahramanmaras were subjected to severe destruction.
The quake’s epicenter was located 26 km away from the city of Gaziantep with a population of about 1.06 million.
Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said that three more earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.4-6.6 rocked Gaziantep province in south-eastern Türkiye. As a result of the earthquake that hit Türkiye, strong tremors were also felt in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Cyprus.
As many as 8,574 people have been killed, and 49,133 have got injured in the quake.