The World Bank said that the catastrophe of the two devastating earthquakes that struck the border area between Turkey and Syria at dawn on February 6, which resulted in the deaths of more than 50,000 people, caused property damage worth $5.1 billion in Syria alone.
The bank stated in an estimate it issued on Friday that the current value of buildings and infrastructure damaged or destroyed is estimated at about 10% of the gross domestic product in Syria.
The report indicated that among the damaged buildings in Syria are cultural heritage sites in historical areas.
Damage to residential buildings accounts for almost half of the total, one-third to non-residential buildings, and one-fifth of damage to infrastructure such as roads or electricity and water facilities.
The bank indicated that these estimates are preliminary due to the occurrence of aftershocks, and the report focused mainly on the damage caused by the first two devastating earthquakes that struck the country on the sixth of February.
"These losses have exacerbated the devastation, suffering and hardship that the Syrian people have endured for years," said Jean-Christophe Carré, Regional Director for the Middle East at the World Bank.
"The disaster will lead to a decline in economic activity, which will further affect the prospects for growth in Syria," Carré added.
The greatest damage from the two earthquakes occurred in northwestern Syria, where the Syrian opposition controls most of those areas.
The bank stated that Aleppo governorate alone is the most affected governorate, as it recorded 45% of the total estimated damage caused by earthquakes, followed by Idlib with 37% of damages, then the coastal governorate of Latakia with 11%.
The bank indicated that due to a high degree of uncertainty regarding a number of elements of this preliminary estimate, estimates of the total direct damages range between $2.7 billion and $7.9 billion.
He clarified that the estimate does not include the economic effects and losses inflicted on the Syrian economy on a larger scale.
In a separate report released earlier this week, the World Bank estimated total property damage in Turkey at at least $34.2 billion.
And at the dawn of last February 6, a devastating earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria with a magnitude of 7.7, followed by another hours later with a magnitude of 7.6 and hundreds of violent aftershocks, which left great losses in lives and property in both countries.