Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu announced that the death toll from the devastating earthquake that struck large areas in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria has risen at dawn on February 6.
Soylu said in an interview on the official Turkish channel TRT, on Wednesday evening, from the Disaster Coordination Center in the southern state of Hatay, that the new death toll from the earthquake in Turkey has reached 43,556 people.
Soylu added that the rate of damage assessment in Hatay ranges between 75-80 percent, noting that 750,000 "independent sections" were damaged, including commercial areas.
On February 6, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, followed by another with a magnitude of 7.6 and thousands of violent aftershocks, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving huge material damage in both countries.
During the past two days, aftershocks continued to hit areas in southern Turkey, as the Turkish Seismological Institute at the University of Bosphorus reported that an aftershock of 4.5 degrees on the Richter scale struck the state of Diyarbakir, southern Turkey, the day before yesterday, Tuesday.
The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority announced that a 4.1-magnitude earthquake struck Albistan district in Kahramanmaraş province on Wednesday morning.
The two tremors came after two earthquakes of 6.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees on the Richter scale that struck the center of the "Dafna" and "Samandag" regions in Hatay, on Monday evening, and spread to northern Syria, while the residents of Lebanon and Palestine felt them, and dozens of aftershocks followed, and the two earthquakes resulted in 6 dead and dozens wounded.