Turkey earthquake: Schools, colleges, in Turkey, Syria closed as three powerful quakes leave over 2,000 dead

Schools across ten cities in Turkey will remain closed for a week, according to local media reports as three powerful earthquakes have left over 2,000 individuals dead in the country and its neighbor Syria.

The tremors have wiped out entire sections of major Turkish cities, which house a significant population of Syrian immigrants, who have fled the civil war, according to AFP.

Schools in Turkish cities and provinces such as Kahramanmaraş, Hatay, Gaziantep, Osmaniye, Adıyaman, Malatya, Şanlıurfa, Adana, Diyarbakır, and Kilis will remain closed for a week, according to the Turkish government.

School lectures have also been suspended in Syria, a country already reeling under the impact of having over 2 million children out of school, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Syria. Millions of school children are also internally displaced in the Middle Eastern country.

Syrian state media SANA reported that almost 42 people lost their lives in the earthquake in Ankara and nearby regions, including the Syria-Lebanon border. Exams scheduled for Monday in at least two Syrian universities have been postponed, according to SANA.

Search is still on for more victims as many have been reported to be still under the debris left in the aftermath of the earthquake.

A geophysics professor who studies seismic activity in the Middle East has stated that the 7.8 magnitude earthquake is larger than anything Turkey has witnessed in the past in over hundred years.

Martin Mai from the King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia told Radio Live 5's Naga Munchetty that there is currently no way to predict earthquakes, instead, people have the option to just prepare.

"This tectonic plate has been loaded over the last decades, or centuries, and probably it was ready to go and the earthquake this morning pushed it over the edge," stated Mai, according to the BBC.