According to the Turkish disaster management authority Afad, two quakes three minutes apart shook Hatay province with magnitudes of 6.4 and 5.8 in the evening. Initially, an earthquake was reported. The epicenter was in the district of Samandag, as the earthquake station Kandilli in Istanbul announced on Monday. As a result, at least eight people were injured.

The first quake was not an aftershock of the major tremors of two weeks ago, but new quakes, according to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay. According to Oktay, there have been 20 aftershocks so far. The previously issued tsunami warning was a standard procedure, the warning will now be lifted.

The broadcaster CNN Türk reported that people had run into the streets in panic, and that the power had gone out in Hatay. The mayor of Hatay, Lütfü Savas, warned that the earthquakes continued. Via Twitter, he called for people to stay away from buildings in danger of collapsing.

According to media reports, the quake was also felt in the surrounding provinces, in northern Syria, in Israel, Iraq and Lebanon. In several places near the city of Aleppo, houses collapsed again, said a spokeswoman for the aid organization SAMS. Among them is the small town of Jindiris near the Turkish border, which was hit hard by the quakes two weeks ago. Whether houses collapsed in Turkey was initially unclear.

A resident near the Syrian city of Aleppo said the quake was as strong as the one two weeks ago, but didn't last that long. "It scared people and made them run into the streets," said local resident named Abdel Kafi. "Many people have left their homes and are roaming the streets in fear that more (earthquakes) will follow," including in the Syrian capital Damascus, wrote the spokeswoman of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) for the region, Rula Amin, on Twitter.

On February 6, an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 shook southeastern Turkey and northern Syria early in the morning, followed hours later by a second severe quake of magnitude 7.6. The epicenter in both cases was in the southern Turkish province of Kahramanmaras. More than 47,000 people died, including more than 41,000 in Turkey.