- The death toll in Turkey is 22,327, over 3,500 in Syria.
- Millions homeless in the middle of winter.
- UN aid chief praises Turkey’s earthquake response.
Exhausted aid workers on Saturday pulled out a dwindling number of survivors from the rubble of an earthquake in Turkey and Syria, five days after a region in the region. The worst natural disasters The death toll stands at around 26,000 and is likely to rise much higher.
Some relief operations were called off after reports of looting.
His handling of Turkey faces questions. The most destructive earthquake Since 1939, President Tayyip Erdogan has promised to start rebuilding within weeks after what he said were millions of buildings destroyed.
In Syria, the devastation hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, displacing many people for a second time after already being displaced by the ongoing civil war.
In the southern Turkish city of Antakya, body bags littered the streets and residents wore masks against the smell of death as they joined rescue workers who had yet to reach some buildings.
“There’s chaos, debris and bodies everywhere,” said one, whose group worked through the night to try to reach a university professor who called them from the wreckage.
By morning he had stopped responding.
In Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the earthquake in Turkey, relief efforts were scant amid mounds of broken concrete of collapsed houses and apartment blocks.
But in one building, rescuers reached for a five-year-old girl who was still alive, buried between concrete slabs, lifted on a stretcher, wrapped in foil, and chanted “God is the greatest.” had been.
Only several others were rescued alive on Saturday.
Two German aid organizations suspended operations, citing reports of clashes and shootings between groups of people.
An Austrian team also briefly suspended operations.
‘Robbers with knives’
Gizam, an aid worker from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, said she had seen looters in Antakya. “We cannot intervene much because most of the looters have knives,” he said.
Police and soldiers were out in force on Saturday to maintain order, also help with traffic, rescue and distribution of food items.
Turkey said about 80,000 people were in hospital, with more than 1 million in temporary shelters.
Outside Antioch, workers at a mass grave lowered the bodies into a freshly dug trench where a mechanical digger covered them with earth. About 80 bags were awaiting burial.
New graves also cover a hillside outside Gaziantep, some marked with flowers or small Turkish flags fluttering in the breeze. A woman breaks down crying next to one of the graves as a boy tries to comfort her.
Survivors feared disease, infrastructure was destroyed.
“If people don’t die here under the rubble, they will die of injuries, if not, they will die of infection. There are no toilets here. This is a big problem,” said rescue worker Gizm.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths called the earthquake the worst in the region in 100 years. Appreciating Turkey’s response, he said that it is his experience that people in disaster-stricken areas are always disappointed in relief efforts.
He predicted that the death toll would at least double.
The disaster came as Erdogan was preparing for national elections in June. His popularity was already declining due to the rising cost of living and the depreciating Turkish currency.
Even before the earthquake, the vote was seen as the most difficult challenge in Erdogan’s two decades in power. Since the disaster, he has called for solidarity and condemned “negative” politics.
People in the quake-hit area and opposition politicians have accused the government of initially slow and inadequate aid, and critics say the military, which played a key role after the 1999 earthquake, has not stepped in quickly enough. was
Erdogan has acknowledged some problems, particularly getting aid to an area where transport links were disrupted, but said the situation was later brought under control.
Questions are also being asked about the correctness of the buildings. State prosecutors in Adana ordered the detention of 62 people in an investigation into the collapsed buildings, while prosecutors in Diyarbakir sought the arrest of 33 people for the same reason, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
One of the worst disasters of the century
Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake, with several powerful aftershocks in Turkey and Syria, ranks as the world’s seventh-deadliest natural disaster this century, behind the 2003 earthquake in neighboring Iran. The death toll had reached 31,000.
The death toll in Turkey so far stands at 22,327, making it the country’s deadliest earthquake since 1939. More than 3,500 people have been killed in Syria, where the toll has not been updated since Friday.
In the opposition-held northwest, it was an eerie déjà vu for many once uprooted from the war.
“The first day we slept on the streets, the second day we slept in our cars, then we slept in other people’s houses,” said Ramadan Suleiman, 28, whose family migrated from eastern Syria to the town of Jandares. had escaped, which was badly affected. Damaged in the earthquake.
In the government-held Syrian city of Aleppo, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the devastation as “heartbreaking” as he oversaw some aid distributions and promised more.
A shipment of Italian aid destined for government-held areas of Syria has arrived in Beirut, Italy’s ambassador to Damascus said, in the first European earthquake aid to the government.
Western countries have largely distanced themselves from President Bashar al-Assad during the war that began in 2011.
According to Syrian state media, the aid received by the North West is small compared to dozens of planes arriving in Syrian government-held areas – many of them from Arab countries, Russia, Iran, India and Bangladesh.