Vietnam's Acting President Vo Thi Anh Xuan on February 6 sent messages of sympathy to President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President of Syria Bashar al-Assad over casualties caused by a strong earthquake in the two countries.

As of 6:00 pm the same day (Vietnam time), both countries recorded over 1,472 fatalities, including 912 in Turkey and 560 in Syria, and nearly 6,100 injured from the earthquake which has been the most powerful over the past nearly 100 years.

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake occurred at about 4:17am (local time) with the epicenter located 17.9 km in depth in Gaziantep province. It also detected another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 that occurred about 15 minutes later near the first location./.