The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) announced that the death toll from the earthquake had risen to 42,310, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed draft laws to restrict construction in the country's earthquake-prone areas.

According to data published by Avad, 7,184 aftershocks occurred after the double earthquake that hit Kahramanmaraş two weeks ago.

For his part, the governor of Hatay announced that the number of victims of the two earthquakes that struck the state on Monday evening had risen to 6 dead and about 300 injured.

This morning, search and rescue teams pulled out the bodies of 3 citizens from under the rubble, who died while trying to remove items from their house damaged in the previous earthquake.

The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority reported that two earthquakes measuring 6.4 and 5.8 on the Richter scale struck the center of the "Dafna" and "Samandag" regions in Hatay (south of the country) on Monday evening.

The disaster management added that 90 aftershocks were recorded after the two earthquakes, and that residents of the cities of Hatay, Gaziantep, Mersin, Adana, Antalya and Kahramanmaraş felt the earthquake, and citizens of several cities were seen taking to the streets for fear of damage to buildings from the effects of the earthquakes.


Residents of 10 countries - including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine - felt the two earthquakes.

New legislation

On the other hand, the Turkish President said that the time has come to take firm decisions and legislation to protect against upcoming earthquakes, and revealed draft laws restricting the construction of more than 3 floors in high-risk areas.

Since the beginning of this month, Turkey has been subjected to a series of devastating earthquakes, followed by thousands of aftershocks, and it was considered one of the strongest earthquakes that occurred in Anatolia in two thousand years.

On the sixth of February, an earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria with a magnitude of 7.8, followed by another hours later with a magnitude of 7.5, and their destructive extent reached as far as Aleppo, Syria.

Which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in the two countries, in addition to huge material destruction, followed by more than 6 thousand aftershocks.

In northwestern Syria, the Syrian Civil Defense reported that 190 people were injured as a result of the two new earthquakes in Hatay, and added that most of the injuries occurred due to falling stones or jumping from tall buildings, the stampede and the collapse of two uninhabited cracked buildings and the minaret of a mosque in Jenderes (north of Aleppo), to A number of cracked buildings in Khirbet al-Joz, al-Hamziyeh, al-Maland, al-Zouf, and Beit Soufan (west of Idlib) were left without injuries. The walls and balconies of houses in several cities and towns in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib collapsed.

The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) of the United Nations estimated the number of those dependent on humanitarian support in northern Syria at more than 4 million people.

In a new report, ESCWA said that 9 million people were affected in Syria as a result of the earthquake.

The UN report called for facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to all parts of Syria and increasing the support provided.

In the same context, the Syrian Networks Association said - in a press conference held in the city of Jenderes - that the United Nations insistence on coordinating all response efforts with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and providing assistance only after obtaining the green light from him;

It wasted precious time in the response process, and caused avoidable death and suffering for thousands of Syrians.