Antioquia, ground zero of the earthquake in southeastern Turkey

Despite being some 180 kilometers south of the epicenter of the devastating earthquakes last Monday, the historic city of Antioquia, in the extreme southeast of Turkeyis completely destroyed.

Its famous old town, made of stone and with old streets, has ceased to exist. It has endured for thousands of years, but suddenly it has turned into a maze of rubble and fallen roofs.

The new part of the city, which has about 200,000 inhabitants, is even worse, since there are practically no buildings that are well preserved.

Antioquia is not just a historic city but a mosaic of ethnic groups and beliefs, such as Sunni Muslims, Alevis and Christians living in harmony for centuries, recalls EFE Ferhat, a resident of the old town.

There, the famous Ulu Mosque has completely collapsed. There is another nearby mosque, also historic, which has remained in an arch a few meters high, nothing more.

Nearby is a Turkish Christian church which, miraculously, is standing because it is small, one story and made of stone with a courtyard.

Some neighbors have taken refuge there to spend the cold nights with a brazier. But the other churches around are also in ruins.

Antioquia was until the weekend a historical place of great tourist interest, with nearby beaches and hotels, which has not survived the earthquake either.

Hurriyet street, which was once the center of commercial and night life, has disappeared under the rubble.

Three days have passed since the quakes, measuring magnitudes 7.7 and 7.6, and hopes of finding survivors are beginning to fade.

However, everywhere you can see rescue teams at work, with bulldozers and cranes.

From time to time on a team someone thinks they have heard voices. Then the generators, the bulldozers, the jackhammers go off. All is silent and the rescuers call among the ruins to see if anyone answers.

But most of the time now they are just pulling corpses out of the rubble.

The people who have been able to survive the disaster are on the streets, since there is not a single habitable building left here.

In some streets near the center there are some buildings standing, but no one dares to enter, except for some low premises or a one-story mosque, which have indeed resisted the earthquakes.

It is there that hundreds of residents of the area have found refuge. They sleep on the floor, in chairs, with blankets donated by humanitarian organizations.

It is a safe place, assures Efe Derya, a neighbor, an accountant by profession, who has lost all the material she had last Monday, but saved her life and that of her family.

He says that his house fell down right after he left, but there were still at least two people in the basement.

Derya says that for now they have enough food, water and blankets to protect themselves against the cold.

In other places, people are not lucky enough to have a place left standing to take refuge, but rather they are in the street, out in the open, in front of their ruins.

Others are staying in tents, which the AFAD emergency management agency has built in city parks.

No one knows when normal life will return. Derya fears that it will be a long time, since the seismic plates will need weeks to calm down, to put themselves back in place.

At least the aftershocks are starting to subside and are less strong, although they are still a great danger to people working on the rubble, as any tremor can collapse half-standing building structures.

(With information from EFE)