With more than 8,700 deaths recorded so far, the earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale that shook Turkey and Syria early Monday is the most serious registered in the area in recent years.
In the video that accompanies this news you can see a review of the 10 deadliest earthquakes so far this century.
Like the one that India suffered in 2001, when an earthquake similar to the one that occurred in Turkey, of magnitude 7.9, caused the death of 14,000 people.
The two earthquakes that have caused the most deaths since the beginning of the 21st century were those in Indonesia in 2004 and Haiti in 2010. It is estimated that nearly 250,000 people died in the latter.
It lasted just 20 seconds and left 1.5 million people homeless.
The one that hit the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh also caused more than 200,000 deaths.
More information
Latest news of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria
In this video summary you can also see the earthquake that killed 31,000 people in Bam (Tehran) in 2003. In Sichuan (China) 70,000 people died after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the middle of the school day in 2008. Meanwhile, northwestern Japan was rocked by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011, which killed 15,690 people.
Pakistan (73,000 deaths in 2005, northeast of Islamabad), Nepal (9,000 deaths in 2015) and Yogyakarta and Sulawey (in Indonesia, in 2018, with 4,000 deaths) also suffered earthquakes with devastating consequences.
The images that are seen in the video that accompanies this text are a sample of the serious effects that these disasters produce.
These earthquakes have originated in countries where the resources and infrastructures are not prepared for this time of catastrophes, which makes rescue work difficult.
Other stronger earthquakes, in Japan or Chile, have not caused such a number of victims thanks to the fact that strong regulations are followed in those countries for the construction of anti-seismic buildings.
