Brussels: Europe and the Arabs - agencies
Countries in the European Union and outside pledged to provide assistance to Turkey after the violent earthquake that occurred last night, and Borrell, the European Union's foreign affairs coordinator, said that member states are ready to help Turkey and Syria in the aftermath of the earthquake,The European Union has activated the Civil Protection Mechanism, the department of the European Commission responsible for humanitarian assistance. Rescue teams from Romania and the Netherlands are now on their way to Turkey. and this came as President Erdogan requested foreign assistance in rescue efforts. According to local media in Amsterdam, the Netherlands has sent a search and rescue team to Turkey. This USAR team consists of army, police, firefighters and first responders. For his part, Ukrainian President Zelensky said that his country is also ready to provide the necessary assistance to Turkey.
And the earthquake in southern Turkey last night left hundreds of dead and thousands wounded, and Turkey reported more than 280 dead, and neighboring Syria more than 230 so far, and it is feared that the numbers will rise, and many people are still under the rubble.
   The magnitude of the earthquake was 7.8 on the Richter scale, and its epicenter was dozens of kilometers from the city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, where about two million people live.
   According to various media reports, the damage caused by the earthquake is great. Many buildings have collapsed. Rescue workers are looking for survivors, but they have to be careful due to aftershocks The earthquake that hit southern Turkey was not far from the border with Syria According to Syrian state media, some buildings collapsed in the city of Aleppo Buildings in the southern capital Damascus were also said to have shaken .
   Buildings also shook in Lebanon for about a minute, and many residents of the capital, Beirut, fled their homes. The earthquake was also felt in Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Cyprus.
   Earthquakes are most common in Turkey, where geological fault lines run across the country, where two tectonic plates meet, and if they shift, an earthquake can occur.
The US Geological Survey described the violent earthquake that struck southern Turkey early Monday morning as the strongest the country has seen in more than a hundred years.
"The area that was struck by the earthquake is prone to seismic activity, but this earthquake is larger than it has ever occurred, especially since it is close to the Earth's surface," Carl Lang, assistant professor in the College of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech University, told CNN. .
And the Turkish Vice President announced that the death toll from the earthquake that struck Turkey had risen to 284, and the number of injured had reached 2,323.
According to Sky News, the Turkish vice president said that the number of buildings that collapsed as a result of the earthquake rose to more than 1,700 buildings. He explained that civil air traffic was suspended at Gaziantep Airport.
He said that schools were suspended for a week in 10 governorates affected by the earthquake.
The US Geological Survey announced the registration of at least 18 aftershocks measuring more than four degrees on the Richter scale, after the violent earthquake that struck southern Turkey early Monday morning.
And the agency stated - according to the American network "CNN" - that the strongest aftershock that had been recorded so far struck just 11 minutes after the violent earthquake,