With the death toll still mounting, the massive earthquake that struck southeastern Türkiye and northwestern Syria on Feb. 6 is among the 10 deadliest earthquakes of the past 100 years with over 41,000 dead as of Friday.
Western experts put the toll as high as 700,000, which would make it the second most deadly in the history of humanity, after the huge 1556 disaster that struck northern Shaanxi province, with over 830,000 people dead.
On Dec. 26, 2004, a massive 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that killed over 230,000 people throughout the region, including 170,000 in Indonesia alone. Waves 30 meters (100 feet) high, traveling at 700 kph (435 mph), swallowed everything in their path.
A magnitude 7.0 quake on Jan. 12, 2010, devastated the capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region.
The quake had cut the country off from the rest of the world for 24 hours, killing over 200,000 people, leaving 1.5 million homeless, and shattering much of Haiti's frail infrastructure.
In October of the same year, Haiti was also hit by a cholera epidemic reportedly spread by Nepalese peacekeepers who arrived after the quake. It killed over 10,000 people.
On Sept. 1, 1923, two minutes before noon, a 7.9 quake shook Kanto in Japan. Over 142,000 people died in the earthquake, which caused a fire to break out that destroyed Tokyo.
On Oct. 5, 1948, at least 110,000 people succumbed to a 7.3 quake around Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, which at the time was part of the Soviet Union.
Over 87,000 people, including 5,335 school pupils, were left dead or missing when a 7.9 magnitude quake struck China's southwestern Sichuan province on May 12, 2008.
The quake causes outrage after it emerged that 7,000 schools were devastated, triggering accusations of shoddy construction, corner-cutting and corruption, especially as many other buildings nearby held firm.
An earthquake on Oct. 8, 2005, claimed over 73,000 lives most in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir. A further 3.5 million were displaced because of the catastrophe.
On Dec. 25, 1932, a 7.9 magnitude quake killed around 70,000 in Gansu province, in northwest China.
With over 41,000 dead, 7.7 and 7.6 twin earthquakes that struck Türkiye's Kahramanmaraş Pazarcık and Elbistan provinces on Feb. 6 marked the biggest quakes in Türkiye in nearly a century.
On Feb. 17, the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) stated 38,044 people had died in Türkiye, while the official death toll in Syria is 3,688, bringing the confirmed total to 41,732.
Named as the "worst event" to hit the region in a century, according to United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths, and ''Europe's worst natural disaster in the 21st century'' as per World Health Organization (WHO), the earthquake affected around 13.5 million people.
