Dennis Romero is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
The Associated Press
Courtney Brogle , Beatrice Guzzardi and Lana Green contributed .
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said search-and-rescue teams have been sent to the region. Speaking on Twitter, he expressed hope for a rapid recovery.
The temblor was centered in the country's Pazarcik district, in Kahramanmaras province, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, which cited emergency management officials.
The outlet published a photo of a pancaked building, window coverings exposed to the air, furniture crushed, water fixtures detached from plumbing. Its location was not made clear.
Video from Malatya, Turkey, distributed by Reuters, showed damaged buildings, rubble on the street, and rescuers on the ground ready to act.
The temblor near the northern border of Syria was followed by that 6.7 earthquake roughly 11 minutes later, the survey said. The region is seismically active, it said, and the initial quake appears to be within the vicinity of a triple-junction of tectonics, between the Anatolia, Arabia and Africa plates, the USGS said.
The country continued to shake as aftershocks rumbled throughout the day. The USGS recorded subsequent temblors of magnitude 5.6, 5.1, and 5.2, in that order.
Syria’s state media reported that some buildings collapsed in the northern city of Aleppo and the central city of Hama.
In Syria’s rebel-held northwest that borders Turkey several buildings collapsed, according to the opposition’s Syrian civil Defense.
A computer-generated analysis by the USGS PAGER program, for Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response, determined the number of fatalities could surpass 100 and reach as many as 1,000. It also calculated losses could amount to $1 billion or more.
However, the USGS said those projections had not yet been reviewed by a scientist.
The quake jolted residents in Lebanon from beds, shaking buildings for about 40 seconds. Many residents of Beirut left their homes and took to the streets or drove in their cars away from buildings.
Turkey sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes; 18,000 people were killed in powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
The recorded history of earthquakes in the region goes back hundreds of years, according to the USGS, which said Monday's temblor happened in either the East Anatolia fault zone or the Dead Sea transform fault zone.
The last big shaker in the region took place on Jan. 24, 2020, and measured 6.7, the USGS said. It was northeast of Monday's quake, it said.
Nearby Aleppo, Syria, was struck by what experts estimate was a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 1138, the survey said. An estimated magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the same area of Syria in 1822, it said.
