I have seen nothing like this in my life. We kept swinging from side to side for about a minute.

This is to say that of Nilofer Aslan, a resident of Adana in southern Turkey, who was talking about the horror of the severe earthquake that hit Syria and Lebanon, including Turkey, this morning.

Speaking to the BBC in the Turkish city of Adana, Aslan told the BBC about the time of the earthquake: "When the five-story apartment building shook, I was convinced that my family would not survive." I thought we would die in the earthquake.

He remembers calling out to his loved ones in other rooms."I said, 'This is a tremor, essentially we kick the bucket together in a similar spot,'" he says. This is the main thing that rung a bell.When the earthquake subsided, Aslan ran outside and saw that four buildings around him had collapsed.

He said that 'I could not take anything with me while running, I only went out in slippers.'

Hundreds of people were killed and several buildings were destroyed in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in the southeastern region of Gazi-Antep on Monday morning.

According to the Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, the terrible earthquake caused destruction in 10 cities, including Gazi-Antep, Qaharman Marash, Hatay, Osmania, Adiyaman, Malatya, Şanlıurfa, Adana, Diyarbakır and Kilis.

The governor of Osmania has said that 34 buildings have been destroyed in the province. Online, several videos have been shared from Turkey showing residential buildings collapsing as rescue workers search for people buried under the rubble.

Immediately after the earthquake, the BBC has tried to know their impressions by talking to a few people who survived the earthquake in other countries, including Turkey.

The windows of the building in front of us were broken.

Ozgul Konakci, 25, who lives in Malatya, Turkey, says she survived the earthquake, but the aftershocks and cold weather are troubling her.

He told BBC Turkey that the search and rescue efforts for people under the debris are ongoing. It is very cold here and it is snowing at the moment. Everyone is on the streets, people are wondering what to do. In front of our eyes, the windows of a building were shattered by the aftershocks.”

Konakchi and his brother were sleeping on the sofa when the earthquake struck.

"We looked at each other and said 'Are you moving?' I looked at the lamp, it looked like it was going to fall over," he said. As soon as our three-year-old nephew entered the room, we jumped off the sofa.

He said that his building has been damaged but five buildings nearby have collapsed.

He further said that there is a traffic jam in the city as people are trying to move away from the buildings due to the fear of aftershocks.

'I felt like I was in a baby's cradle'

Apart from Turkey, citizens of Syria have also spoken about their fear and anxiety after the strong earthquake that struck early in the morning.

"Paintings fell from the walls of the house," Samar, a resident of the Syrian capital Damascus, told Reuters. I sat up nervously. Now we were all dressed and standing at the door.

``I felt like I was in a baby's cradle,'' Erdam, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, told Reuters by phone. did not feel Everyone is sitting in their cars or trying to drive away from buildings to open spaces.

"I think that not a single person in Ghazi Antip will be at home anymore."

"There are destroyed buildings around me, houses are on fire"

Another man in the Turkish city of Pazarjak said his family was woken up by strong tremors and waited cold and anxious for sunrise to assess the damage.

"There are destroyed buildings around me, houses on fire," Nihad Altandagh told The Guardian. There are buildings that are showing cracks. A building has collapsed just 200 meters from where I am now. People are still outside and everyone is scared.


The whole building shook, I felt an explosion: Lebanese student:

A student of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, about 450 kilometers away from the location of the earthquake, said that "I was writing something when suddenly the whole building shook." I felt that there was a strong explosion.

"I was standing near the window and I was afraid it would break," he said. The tremors of the earthquake lasted for four to five minutes and it was a terrifying scene.

A BBC correspondent in Diyarbakir has reported that a shopping mall in the city has collapsed and been destroyed.

Rushdie Abul Auf, a BBC producer in the Gaza Strip, says the house he was staying in shook for 45 seconds.

Turkey is situated in quite possibly of the most dynamic seismic locale on the planet.

It should be remembered that during the year 1999, more than 17 thousand people were killed in a big earthquake in the northwestern region of Turkey.