IANS

The death toll in Monday morning's devastating earthquake in the Turkey-Syria border area has crossed over 2,300, reports said.

The death toll in Turkey has risen again to 1,498, according to the country's disaster management agency, and 810 in Syria, the BBC reported.

The 7.8 magnitude quake struck near Turkey's Gaziantep early on Monday (local time) while a new 7.5-magnitude tremor hit at around 1.30 p.m. local time and was described, by officials, as a new quake, "not an aftershock".

In Gaziantep, at least 80 people were killed, while 70 died in Kahramanmaras.

In Malatya province, north-east of Gaziantep, at least 47 people were killed, while Sanliurfa, to the east, there were 18 deaths.

Other deaths were reported in various places including Diyarbakir and Osmaniye.

In Syria, more than 470 people lost their lives and nearly 1,000 others were injured.

In a statement, the Syrian Health Ministry said that of the overall fatalities, 239 were reported from the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus.

The White Helmets rescue group, which operates in rebel-controlled areas of north-western Syria, said on Twitter that at least 147 people had died there.

Rescue operations are currently underway amid massive damages in the affected areas.

The Syrian Ministry of Defence has put all its units on high alert to help the people directly affected by the earthquake and rescue those still stuck under the rubble.

In the wake if the quake, the Transport Ministry suspended trains on all routes as a precautionary measure.

Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency meeting with his cabinet to discuss the repercussions of the earthquake.

The devastating temblor came as the region was under a snowstorm expected to continue until Thursday.

As a result of the quake, explosion occurred on a gas pipeline in Turkey's southern province of Hatay.

The state-owned energy company BOTAS has suspended natural gas flow to southern Gaziantep, Hatay and Kahramanmaras provinces.

Monday's earthquake is believed to be the strongest in Turkey since the magnitude 7.9 temblor that hit eastern Erzincan province in 1939, which killed 33,000 people.

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