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More than 300 people have been killed in Turkey and Syria after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in the early hours of Monday morning, in one of the most powerful quakes to hit the region in at least a century, the Guardian reported.

Hundreds were injured and the toll was expected to rise as rescue workers and residents frantically searched for survivors under the rubble of crushed buildings in cities on both sides of the border.

The quake struck at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometres (11 miles), the US Geological Survey said, with a 6.7-magnitude aftershock striking 15 minutes later. Turkey’s emergency management ministry, the AFAD, said the quake first struck in the town of Pazarcık, an hour north of Gaziantep, a key industrial city in southern Turkey. The town of Nurdağı, some 80km (50 miles) south-west, was the epicentre of the second tremor.

Television images showed shocked people in Turkey standing in the snow in their pyjamas, watching rescuers dig through the debris of damaged homes. Buildings were levelled while many were still asleep.

The number of confirmed casualties rose rapidly on Monday morning as rescue teams rushed to find survivors.

Turkey’s AFAD declared at least 76 people dead and hundreds injured across seven of the country’s southern provinces adjacent to the border with northern Syria. The Syrian health ministry said at least 245 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus.

The death toll was expected to climb substantially as dozens of apartment blocks were flattened across major cities in the nighttime disaster.

Tremors were felt as far away as Lebanon, Greece, Israel and the island of Cyprus.

In Syria, early footage from local rescue teams suggested the province of Idlib in the north could be one of the worst affected areas, with the quake hitting a region already extensively damaged from over a decade of civil war and where millions are living in areas for those internally displaced. An estimated four million people live in Idlib province.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue service known as the White Helmets that works to save those trapped under debris from airstrikes, said they had declared a state of emergency to rescue the many feared trapped under collapsed buildings in areas around Idlib across opposition-held areas in north-western Syria.