An Irish photographer covering the aftermath of the massive recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria says she was lucky to escape unharmed during an aftershock in recent days.
Clodagh Kilcoyne is in Antakya, in southern Turkey, covering the humanitarian response for the Reuters news agency. She lives in Kildare.
"We were interviewing a family that were waiting to be evacuated," she told Katie Hannon for Upfront: The Podcast.
"We were in an open space in the city centre, we were just about to move into the streets and the woman that we were interviewing insisted we sit down for tea. I think that probably saved our lives."
A few minutes later, a 6.4-magnitude aftershock struck.
"It all kicked off and it became very violent.
"It threw us all to the ground, and it terrified everyone. It threw me beside a family that I photographed. The father was just holding his wife and two children so tightly on the ground. It was a really upsetting scene. Really upsetting, and it was very frightening."
Monday's aftershock was one of several since devastating twin quakes destroyed large swathes of the region two weeks ago. The final death toll is still to be confirmed. The latest updates from the Turkish and Syrian governments combined top 47,000.
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Ms Kilcoyne said it reminded her of the destruction she'd seen during assignments to Ukraine in recent months.
"It's on an epic level. It's very hard to comprehend when you first arrive. There's just bodies being pulled out everywhere.
"When I'm walking through, it's bringing me back to Ukraine. All the time I'm thinking in my head 'a missile did this', I keep forgetting that it's the Earth."
Since the full-scale invasion was launched a year ago, Ms Kilcoyne has twice been deployed to Ukraine, as well as a further assignment to the Ukraine-Romania border.
She covered the Donbas region, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the war, as well as the area around Kharkiv.
Ms Kilcoyne was speaking to Katie Hannon about her time on the ground in Ukraine, one year on from when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
"Walking through Bakmut, it's very nightmarish, at any stage there. Every two or three seconds a shell lands somewhere and it reverberates through the apartments that are still standing," she said. "It goes through your body, it reverberates physically within you."
She says she may return to Ukraine on a further deployment in the coming months.
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