The German Research Centre for Geosciences said the quake struck at a depth of 10km near the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, while the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre monitoring service said the chance of a tsunami risk was being evaluated.

The tremor lasted about a minute and shattered windows, according to a Reuters witness in Diyarbakir, 350km to the east of the epicentre.

Broadcasters TRT and Haberturk showed images of people gathered around a wrecked building in Kahramanmaras, looking for survivors.

The governor of Turkey’s south-eastern province of Sanliurfa, Mr Salih Ayhan, said on Twitter, “we have destroyed buildings” and urged people to move to safe locations.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority put the magnitude of the quake at 7.4 near Kahramanmaras and the larger city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border.

Syrian state media said a large number of buildings collapsed in the province of Aleppo, while a source in the Hama civil service said several buildings collapsed there.

“Paintings fell off the walls in the house,” said a resident of the Syrian capital of Damascus, who wanted to be known only as Mr Samer. “I woke up terrified. Now we’re all dressed and standing at the door.”

People in Damascus, as well as in the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli, ran into the street on foot and took to their cars to get away from buildings for fear of them collapsing, witnesses said.

The area is regularly hit by strong earthquakes.

The head of the Turkish Red Crescent said it was mobilising resources for the region as it had received information of serious damage and collapsed buildings, and urged people to evacuate damaged homes.

Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.

In 1999, Duzce was hit by a 7.4-magnitude earthquake – the worst to hit Turkey in decades.

That quake killed more than 17,000 people, including about 1,000 in Istanbul.

A magnitude 6.8 quake hit Elazig in January 2020, killing more than 40 people.

In October that year, a magnitude 7 quake hit the Aegean Sea, killing 114 people and wounding more than 1,000.

Experts have long warned a large quake could devastate Istanbul, which has allowed widespread construction of buildings without safety precautions. REUTERS, AFP