<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria on Monday, killing dozens, levelling buildings while people were still in their sleep, and sending tremors that were felt as far away as the island of Cyprus.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Local officials in Turkey put the initial death toll at 53, although it threatened to climb substantially higher because it caught most people while they were still at home asleep.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At least 42 people also died in government-controlled parts of northern Syria, state media said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Television images showed shocked people in Turkey standing in the snow in their pyjamas, watching rescuers dig through the debris of damaged homes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The quake struck at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometres (11 miles), the US agency said, with a 6.7-magnitude aftershock striking 15 minutes later.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Turkey's AFAD emergencies service centre put the first quake's magnitude at 7.4.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The earthquake was one of the most powerful to hit the region in at least a century.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I convey my best wishes to all our citizens who were affected by the earthquake," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We hope that we will get through this disaster together as soon as possible and with the least damage."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The earthquake levelled dozens of buildings across major cities of southern Turkey as well as neighbouring Syria, a country gripped by more than a decade of violence that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Images on Turkish television and social media showed rescuers digging through the rubble of levelled buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras and neighbouring Gaziantep.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A fire lit up the night sky in one image from Kahramanmaras, although its origin remained unclear.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">NTV television said buildings also crumbled in the cities of Adiyaman, Malatya and Diyarbakir.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">CNN Turk television said the quake was also felt across parts of central Turkey and the capital Ankara.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'Biggest earthquake' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Syrian state television reported that a building near Latakia, on the west coast of Syria, had collapsed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pro-government media said several buildings had partially collapsed in Hama, central Syria, with civil defence and firefighters working to pull survivors out of the rubble.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Raed Ahmed, who heads Syria's National Earthquake Centre, told pro-government radio that this was "historically, the biggest earthquake recorded in the history of the centre".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Naci Gorur, an earthquake expert with Turkey's Academy of Sciences, urged local officials to immediately check the region's dams for cracks to avert potentially catastrophic floodings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Turkey is in one of the world's most active earthquake zones</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Turkish region of Duzce suffered a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in 1999 -- the worst to hit Turkey in decades.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That quake killed more than 17,000 people, including about 1,000 in Istanbul.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Experts have long warned a large quake could devastate Istanbul, which has allowed widespread building without safety precautions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A magnitude-6.8 quake hit Elazig in January 2020, killing more than 40 people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And in October that year, a magnitude-7.0 quake hit Turkey's Aegean coast, killing 114 people and wounding more than 1,000. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>