GAZIANTEP, Turkey
Thinly stretched rescue teams
worked through the night into Wednesday, pulling more bodies from the rubble of
thousands of buildings downed in Turkey and Syria by a catastrophic earthquake
that killed more than 8,000, their grim task occasionally punctuated by the joy
of finding someone still alive.Men search for people among the debris in a destroyed building in Adana, Turkey, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023
Turkey’s disaster management
agency said the country’s death toll had risen to 6,234 as more bodies had been
recovered. Over 8,000 fatalities have been reported, including those from neighboring
Syria.
Amid calls for the government
to send more help to the disaster zone, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to
travel to town of Pazarcik, the epicenter of the quake, and to the worst-hit
province of Hatay on Wednesday.
Turkey now has some 60,000 aid
personnel in the quake-hit zone, but with the devastation so widespread many
are still waiting for help.
Nearly two days after the
magnitude 7.8 quake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, rescuers
pulled a 3-year-old boy, Arif Kaan, from beneath the rubble of a collapsed
apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a city not far from the epicenter.
With the boy’s lower body trapped under slabs of concrete and twisted rebar, emergency crews lay a blanket over his torso to protect him from below-freezing temperatures as they carefully cut the debris away from him, mindful of the possibility of triggering another collapse.
The boy’s father, Ertugrul
Kisi, who himself had been rescued earlier, sobbed as his son was pulled free
and loaded into an ambulance.
“For now, the name of hope in
Kahramanmaras is Arif Kaan,” a Turkish television reporter proclaimed as the
dramatic rescue was broadcast to the country.
A few hours later, rescuers pulled 10-year-old Betul Edis from the rubble of her home in the city of Adiyaman. Amid applause from onlookers, her grandfather kissed her and spoke softly to her as she was loaded on an ambulance.
But such stories were few more
than two days after Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake, which hit a huge area and
brought down thousands of buildings, with frigid temperatures and ongoing
aftershocks complicating rescue efforts.
Search teams from more
than two
dozen countries joined the Turkish emergency personnel, and aid
pledges poured in.
But with devastation spread
multiple several cities and towns — some isolated by Syria’s ongoing conflict —
voices crying from within mounds of rubble fell silent, and despair grew from
those still waiting for help.
In Syria, the shaking toppled
thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region wracked by the
country’s 12-year
civil war and refugee crisis.
On Monday afternoon in a
northwestern Syrian town, residents found
a crying newborn still connected by the umbilical cord to her deceased
mother. The baby was the only member of her family to survive a building
collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told The Associated Press.Mourners pray over coffins of family members who died in a devastating earthquake that rocked Syria and Turkey at a cemetery in the town of Jinderis, Aleppo province, Syria
Turkey is home to millions of
refugees from the war. The affected area in Syria is divided between
government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave,
where millions rely on humanitarian aid.
As many as 23 million people
could be affected in the quake-hit region, according to Adelheid Marschang, a
senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization, who called it a
“crisis on top of multiple crises.”
Many survivors in Turkey have
had to sleep
in cars, outside or in government shelters.
“We don’t have a tent, we
don’t have a heating stove, we don’t have anything. Our children are in bad
shape. We are all getting wet under the rain and our kids are out in the cold,”
Aysan Kurt, 27, told the AP. “We did not die from hunger or the earthquake, but
we will die freezing from the cold.”
Erdogan said 13 million of the
country’s 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency
in 10 provinces. More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in
Turkey, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels,
authorities said.
In Syria, aid
efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war and the isolation of the
rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russia-backed
government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under Western
sanctions linked to the war.
The United Nations said it was “exploring all avenues” to get supplies to the rebel-held northwest.
In addition to the thousands
killed in Turkey, another 37,011 have been injured.
The death toll in
government-held areas of Syria has climbed to 812, with some 1,400 injured,
according to the Health Ministry. At least 1,020 people have died in the
rebel-held northwest, according to volunteer first responders known as the
White Helmets, with more than 2,300 injured.
The region sits on top of
major fault lines and is
frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly
powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999. - AP
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