Within a matter of hours, Turkey has been subjected to 4 back-to-back earthquakes starting with a 7.8 magnitude one, killing hundreds of people as they slept and leveling buildings. Neighboring Syria was also rocked by the tremors and they were felt as far away as the island of Cyprus, Egypt, and Iraq.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called the first earthquake a historic disaster for which the death toll is likely to rise. He said 2,818 buildings collapsed after the first tremor, describing it as the country’s “largest disaster” since 1939 when a major quake struck the eastern province of Erzincan. The focal point of the quake was in the province of Kahramanmaras and shook southern Turkey and northern Syria overnight. It was followed by a second powerful tremor with a 7.6 magnitude. There was a third one measuring 7.1-magnitude and a fourth one which was 7.5, which took place just an hour back.

Officials have put the combined death toll at more than 1,500 so far but search and rescue teams have been deployed to search for residents feared trapped under the rubble of the collapsed buildings in the area. As a result, the death toll is speculated to rise.

Prayers have poured in for the Turkish people from all corners of the world on social as heart-wrenching photos and videos emerged from the country after the natural disaster. People also pointed out that it was the first time that an area had been struck by four back-to-back quakes in the span of 12 hours. This also sparked holocaust fears among people on the internet. Here are some of the reactions that have emerged:

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.