Istanbul - The airport in the southern Turkish province of Adana was closed for flights until further notice following major earthquakes in the area on Monday, the private Demiroren news agency said.
According to AFP, the earthquake levelled buildings and sent tremors as far away as the island of Cyprus, Egypt and Iraq.
It was one of the largest quakes to strike Turkey in a century. It wiped out entire sections of major cities in a region filled with millions of people who have fled the civil war in Syria and other conflicts.
The head of Syria’s National Earthquake Centre, Raed Ahmed, told pro-government radio that it was “historically, the biggest earthquake recorded in the history of the centre”.
Dutch researcher Frank Hoogerbeets, who works for organisation Solar System Geometry Survey (SSGS) in the Netherlands, had apparently predicted the quake on February 3, 2023, just three days ago.
Sharing a post on his Twitter account, Hoogerbeets wrote: “Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon).”
In the meantime, more than 10 search and rescue teams from the EU have been mobilised in the wake of the major earthquake, a spokesperson for the European Commission said on Monday.
"Urban Search and Rescue teams have been quickly mobilised from Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, France, Greece, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania to support the first responders on the ground," the European Commission said.