From space, the scale of the devastation wrought by the two massive earthquakes that rocked Turkey and Syria is clear.
Photos taken Tuesday by Maxar Technologies, a U.S. defense contractor headquartered in Colorado, show a bird's-eye view of several Turkish towns before and after the temblors, which have claimed the lives at least 11,000 people.
Rubble from several collapsed tower blocks which once stood in the neighborhood can be seen in one image from Islahiye, a small town of around 70,000 people near Turkey's southern border with Syria. Trees inside a verdant park adjacent to the town’s Hacı Ali Ozturk mosque in Islahiye also appear to be completely uprooted.
Elsewhere, terra cotta tiles from the roofs of several homes were tossed to the ground in the town in the Gaziantep province that was once part of the Iron Age kingdom of Sam’al.
Just 10 miles north of Islahiye, archeologists including a team from the University of Chicago and Germany's University of Tübingen, have been working with local people since 2006 to excavate a site at Zincirli Höyük for Bronze Age and Iron Age relics.
At the epicenter of Monday first earthquake in Nurdağı, a town of around 40,000, dozens of white tents — likely shelters for survivors and emergency crews — can be seen lining the roads and streets.
The quake which struck in the early hours of Monday local time, registered at magnitude-7.8 and classified as “major” on the official magnitude scale. Hours later, a second, registering a 7.6-magnitude, struck nearby.
Officials warned the death toll will likely rise in the mountainous region known for cotton, red pepper and wheat production, as many remain trapped under rubble in subzero temperatures at night.
As many as 23 million people, including around 1.4 million children, are likely to have been impacted, according to the World Health Organization.
“It’s now a race against time,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes.”
