BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 14. Azerbaijan was the first to come to help after the earthquake in Türkiye, the Coordinator of the Central Asian and Caucasian regions of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) Muhammed Hamza Nedimoglu told Trend.
"In fact, the help came from where we expected it. According to the latest information I have, among the search and rescue personnel who arrived from foreign countries, the personnel who arrived from Azerbaijan extracted most of the survivors from under the rubble. I thank both the search and rescue personnel from Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people for this.” Nedimoglu said
“The earthquake in Türkiye affected 10 cities. Retrieval of people from the rubble is still ongoing. We are getting very hopeful results. In all of history, there has never been such a devastating earthquake in Türkiye,” he noted.
“The greater the strength of the earthquake, the greater is the scale of destruction, and the heavier is the rubble. It’s currently 10 degrees below zero in the region, and people have been under the rubble for more than a week," the IHH representative added.
A 7.7-magnitude earthquake 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. Following the latest data, 31,643 people have been killed, and 80,278 have got injured in the quake.