At least 470 people were injured in Syria after the latest earthquakes shook Türkiye's Hatay province, with 150 hurt in the opposition-held northwest, a war monitor said Tuesday.
Some 320 were injured in regime-held areas, most of them in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Most of the injured suffered fractures and bruises, the monitor said.
"Hospitals and medical centres have so far recorded, according to the information I received, more than 125 injuries in north-western Syria after the earthquake that struck the region, most of which are injuries resulting from fear and panic, jumping from buildings, or cases of fainting," head of the Syrian rescue group, the White Helmets, Raed Saleh tweeted.
The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said five hospitals it supports in northwest Syria received several people who had sustained minor injuries, some when parts of damaged buildings fell upon them.
In regime-held areas, Aleppo hospitals also received panic-stricken residents, while six people were injured by falling rubble, Syrian news agency SANA said. Al Razi hospital in the city of Aleppo received 47 cases, as per media reports.
"We rushed out, we don't know how we left. I was afraid that we would meet the same fate as those who died under the rubble," said Khadija al-Khalaf, a 45-year-old mother, in the opposition-held city of Azaz.
People jumped off rooftops and balconies of houses as they tried to rush to safety in opposition-held northwest Syria, a monitoring group said.
There were also casualties from falling debris in Salqin, Harem, Idlib, Khirbet al-Juz and rural areas near Aleppo, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In regime-held areas, damaged buildings fell in al-Midan and al-Jamiliya neighborhoods in Aleppo, the monitor added.
Buildings also collapsed in the small town of Jindiris, already hard hit by the earlier quakes, according to a spokesperson for the aid organization SAMS.
People were roaming the streets in many areas, including in Damascus, fearful of further tremors, tweeted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson for the region, Rula Amin.
Abdel Kafi, a Syrian activist in northwest Syria said, "It was strong like the first one but did not last long... It scared people, and masses rushed to the streets." He was referring to the quakes on Feb. 6 that killed 41,156 people in Türkiye alone.
The official death toll in Syria stands at 5,900 but it has not been updated in days. Thousands more are feared dead in both countries.
In Syria alone, 8.8 million people have been affected by the earthquakes, the deputy U.N. representative for Syria, Najat Rochdi, tweeted on Sunday. Activist Mustafa Dahnoun, from Idlib, meanwhile told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) over the phone that "aid is still very slow" and that people in the area "are in dire need of everything."
"The world community should work harder and push for more aid to our region," he said.
