Videos and photographs of the two earthquakes that have destroyed southern Turkey and northern Syria show rescuers digging with their hands, apartment blocks crushed to the grouds in seconds and the shaking apart of a castle that had stood for almost two millennia. The incident has killed at least 7,800 people.

One of the photographs from the Turkish region of Kahramanmaraş depicts the sufferings of a father who holds the hand of his dead teenage daughter as rescuers and civilians search through the flattened building where she died on Monday, reports The Guardian.

Mesut Hancer, the father of 15-year-old Irmak, holds her hand sitting hunched in the rubble as she lies on her bed beneath the slabs of concrete, smashed windows and broken bricks that were once apartments. Close to them, a man with a sledgehammer tries to smash his way through the ruins.

Pazarcık district of Kahramanmaraş, which lies in south-east Turkey, was the epicentre of the first earthquake. The initial, 7.8-magnitude earthquake, was followed, hours later, by a second quake that measured 7.7 on the Richter scale, reports The Guardian.

Pictures from the affected zone present to us the level of suffering of the people, following the natural disaster.
Rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, one of whom lay on a stretcher on the snowy ground elsewhere in Kahramanmaraş province and also quieted the people who had gathered, trying to help so they could hear survivors and find them.

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Mandya (Karnataka) (PTI): A bomb threat email sent to the judge of the Mandya district court here triggered panic on Thursday, prompting police to launch a search operation.

According to police, the district court received a bomb threat through an email earlier in the day, following which authorities immediately evacuated the premises.

Court proceedings were halted, and lawyers, judges, staff and litigants were asked to immediately vacate the premises.

Police teams, along with the bomb disposal squad and fire brigade personnel, rushed to the spot and launched a thorough inspection of the court premises.

Senior police officials, including Additional Superintendent of Police Gangadhar Swamy, were present at the scene and supervised the search operation.

Police later said the threat appeared to be a hoax.

Lawyers said a similar email threat was received on February 16 as well, and expressed concern over the recurrence of such incidents.

Police said an investigation has been launched to nab those behind such acts.