Cities reduced to rubble, mangled messes of concrete and metal, and makeshift hospitals in tents illustrate a devastated Türkiye from newly released satellite images.
As the death toll from the earthquake disaster approaches 10,000, the images released on Wednesday by US company Maxar Technologies show how widespread the devastation and destruction is after the earthquakes struck the country on Monday, compared to 2019.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has declared a three-month state of emergency for 10 provinces in his country, with 15 per cent of the country's 85 million people affected, while in Syria — which is in the midst of a civil war — the situation is much less uncertain.
İslahiye, located in south-east Türkiye's Gaziantep province, near the epicentre of the first magnitude-7.8 earthquake, is unrecognisable.
At first glance, not much appears to be different, with greener surrounds and slightly busier streets in the town about 150 kilometres north of Aleppo.
But once you zoom in, the full extent of the damage the earthquakes caused to the district, with a population close to 70,000 people, becomes clearer.
Building roofs lay across streets, shaken out of position by the powerful quakes, while rubble lines the roads.
Where a few cars were once parked now lie twisted wreckages of concrete and metal, with crews on scene to clean up the devastation left behind.
On the town's outskirts, İslahiye's hospital has expanded to include tents outside to treat those rescued from the rubble, and thousands more who have been injured.
North of İslahiye in the city of Nurdağı, 23km east of the magnitude-7.8 earthquake, the devastation has also been widespread.
The city is home to a smaller population of 40,000, but has been left devastated by the wreckage, with apartment buildings and houses almost unrecognisable.
In areas spared from the worst destruction in the city, tents have been erected to house the thousands of people left homeless by the disaster.
A typically busy thoroughfare, home to cafes, restaurants and a food market, is now lined with dozens of white tents — one of the safer places in the city that avoided the worst of the devastation.
Around the city's sports stadium, apartments and high-rise complexes have been severely damaged, with dozens of cars flocking to the area amidst the rubble.
Satellite images from SkySat and provided by US Earth imaging company Planet Labs show the complete destruction in central Kahramanmaraş, north of Nurdağı.
The city centre is polluted with dust and rubble, with landmarks unrecognisable and some apartment buildings now lying horizontal.
These images provide a first glimpse into how bad the situation is on the ground after the severe earthquakes, but even with the UN completing its own satellite imagery, it will take much longer to get the true picture of just how much damage this deadly disaster has caused.
It will take even longer to know the true toll it will have on Türkiye, Syria, and their neighbouring countries in the months and years ahead.
