Turkmenistan marks the National Day of Remembrance for the victims of the devastating 1948 Ashgabat earthquake on 6 October.
Commemorations are being held at the Halk hakydasy (People's Memory) memorial complex in the capital and in towns and villages across the country. On this occasion, Turkmen Mufti Yalkap Hojagulyev sent his message to President Serdar Berdimuhamdov.
"May all the ayats recited on this day in memory of our ancestors who laid down their heads in all the fierce battles on the sacred Turkmen land, in the Battle of Geok-Depe (1897), who fell in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, as well as the victims of the Ashgabat earthquake of 1948, prayers and supplications for the sovereignty of the motherland, unity and well-being of our courageous people be heard and accepted by the Almighty!".
According to the most conservative estimates, one in three people in Turkmenistan's capital died that fateful night. The disaster destroyed some forty surrounding villages within a fifty kilometre radius of the capital. In an instant, houses and schools, factories and workshops, hospitals and institutes, museums and historical and cultural monuments were reduced to piles of rubble.
Armed forces experts stressed that the force of the quake was equivalent to the explosion of hundreds of nuclear warheads, and cracks half a metre wide appeared in the ground near the city.
All the neighbouring countries, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan, were involved in dealing with the terrible consequences of the catastrophe. The surviving children of Ashgabat were evacuated.
Credits: Eziz Boyarov
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