Floods caused by torrential rains have struck two provinces in Turkey that were devastated by last month’s earthquake, killing at least 10 people and increasing the misery for thousands who were left homeless, officials and media reports said on Wednesday. At least five other people were reported missing.
One person was killed in the town of Tut in southeastern Adiyaman province, where surging waters swept away a container home sheltering a family of earthquake survivors, Governor Numan Hatipoglu said.
The governor of neighbouring Sanliurfa province, Salih Ayhan, told HaberTurk television that four people were killed by the floods in his region.
Later, rescuers found the bodies of five Syrian nationals inside a flooded basement apartment in Sanliurfa, the private DHA news agency reported.
Television footage from Sanliurfa showed flood waters surging along a street and sweeping away cars as well as a man being rescued from an underpass.
Several people were evacuated from a drenched campsite where earthquake survivors were sheltering in tents. Patients were also evacuated from a hospital, HaberTurk reported.
Turkey’s disaster management agency said more than a dozen professional divers were involved in the rescue efforts in each of the two provinces.
According to figures from Turkey’s General Directorate of Meteorology, the municipality of Karakopru in the Sanliurfa province recorded 104.5 millimetres in the last 24 hour period.
The province is located just 87 miles from the city of Gaziantep, which was the epicentre of a seismic series of earthquakes that devastated the region along the northern Syrian border.
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The death toll is likely to rise as emergency services scramble to stabilise the situation.
Footage posted on social media showed civilians attempting to pull their fellow locals from the water.
It comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing for national elections in mid-May.
Turkey’s parliament will close in a month’s time as the nation readies themselves to vote.