Sharjah24 - AFP: State media and a medical source said that at least 245 people died in Syria on Monday as a result of houses collapsing following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that had its epicentre in neighbouring Turkey.
More than 230 people were killed and over 600 injured in government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria, the health ministry said, while a hospital said that eight others were killed in northern areas controlled by pro-Turkish factions.
"Six hundred and thirty-nine people were injured and 237 were killed in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus," the Syrian health ministry said in a statement.
Rescuers rushed to search for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in the pouring winter rain.
In Aleppo alone, 24 people had died and 100 were injured when 20 buildings collapsed in the province, the official news agency SANA had said, quoting an official in the province.
Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo, Syria's pre-war commercial hub, often collapsed due to the dilapidated infrastructure after more than a decade of war as well as little oversight to ensure safety of new construction projects, some built illegally.
SANA said the earthquake was felt from the western coast of Latakia to Damascus.
"This earthquake is the strongest since the National Earthquake Centre was founded in 1995," Raed Ahmed, who heads the centre, told SANA.
Near the border town of Azaz, an AFP correspondent saw rescuers pull out survivors as well as five bodies out of the rubble of a three-storey building that crumbled.
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