A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit below the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul, prompting widespread panic and scores of injuries in the Turkish city, although there were no immediate reports of serious damage.
More than 150 people were hospitalised with injuries sustained while trying to jump from buildings, said the governor’s office in Istanbul, a city that is considered at high risk of a major quake.
The earthquake had a shallow depth of about 6 miles (10km), according to the United States Geological Survey, and its epicentre was about 25 miles (40km) south-west of Istanbul, below the Sea of Marmara.
It was felt in the neighbouring provinces of Tekirdağ, Yalova, Bursa and Balıkesirand in the city of İzmir, about 340 miles (550km) south of Istanbul. The interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said the earthquake lasted 13 seconds and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.9 magnitude.
The quake happened at 12.49pm on Wednesday, during a public holiday when many children were out of school and celebrating in the streets of Istanbul. Panicked residents rushed from their homes and buildings into the streets. The disaster and emergency management agency urged people to stay away from buildings.
“Due to panic, 151 of our citizens were injured from jumping from heights,” the Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement. “Their treatments are ongoing in hospitals and they are not in life-threatening condition.”
Many residents flocked to parks, schoolyards and other open areas to avoid being near buildings in case of collapse or subsequent earthquakes. Some people pitched tents in parks.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said at an event marking the National Sovereignty and Children’s Day holiday: “Thank God, there does not seem to be any problems for now. May God protect our country and our people from all kinds of calamities, disasters, accidents and troubles.”
Leyla Ucar, a personal trainer, said she had been exercising with her student on the 20th floor of a building when they felt intense shaking.
“We shook incredibly. It threw us around, we couldn’t understand what was happening, we didn’t think of an earthquake at first because of the shock of the event,” she said. “It was very scary.”
Senol Sari, 51, told Associated Press he had been with his children in the living room of their third-floor apartment when he heard a loud noise and the building started shaking. They fled to a nearby park. “We immediately protected ourselves from the earthquake and waited for it to pass,” Sari said. “Of course, we were scared.”
They later were able to return home calmly, Sari said, but they are worried that a bigger quake will someday strike the city. He said it was “an expected earthquake, our concerns continue”.
Cihan Boztepe, 40, was one of many who fled to the streets with his family in order to avoid a potential collapse. Standing next to his sobbing child, Boztepe said that in 2023 he had been living in Batman province, an area close to the southern part ofTurkey, where major quakes struck at the time, and that Wednesday’s tremor felt weaker and that he wasn’t as scared.
“At first we were shaken, then it stopped, then we were shaken again. My children were a little scared but I wasn’t. We quickly gathered our things and went down to a safe place. If it were up to me, we would have already returned home,” he said.
Yerlikaya said authorities had not received reports of collapsed buildings. He told Habertürk television that there had been reports of damage to buildings.
Turkey is crossed by two major faultlines and earthquakes are frequent. A7.8-magnitude earthquakeon 6 February 2023, and a second powerful tremor hours later, destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and south-eastern provinces, leaving more than 53,000 people dead. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighbouring Syria.