Plight of homeless deepens as Turkey-Syria earthquake toll passes 19,000
The death toll from earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria this week crosses 19,300 on Thursday as hopes faded of many people being found alive 72 hours since the disaster and frustration simmered over the slow delivery of aid.
A Turkish official said the disaster posed "very serious difficulties" for the holding of an election scheduled for May 14 in which President Tayyip Erdogan has been expected face the toughest challenge in his two decades in power.
On the ground, many people in Turkey and Syria spent a third night sleeping outside or in cars in freezing winter temperatures, their homes destroyed or so shaken by the quakes they were too afraid to re-enter. Hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless in the middle of winter.
The chances of finding survivors trapped beneath rubble and debris are becoming slimmer, with freezing temperatures a major factor affecting conditions.
There has been anger in Turkey over claims that emergency services responded too slowly to the incident, with some people waiting days for help to reach them.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday accepted the government had encountered some problems, but said the situation was now "under control".
In Syria, relief efforts have been complicated by years of conflict that has destroyed the nation's infrastructure.
The death toll from the catastrophic earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday has climbed to more than 19,300 as search and rescue teams battle grim conditions with thousands of collapsed buildings and freezing temperatures.
Here are the latest developments:
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted to "shortcomings" amid growing anger over the state's response to the massive quake, but insisted the situation was now "under control." Meanwhile, trading on Istanbul's stock exchange was halted Wednesday after the main index plummeted in early dealing.
- The World Health Organization said it's scaling up its response in Syria and Turkey because diseases already present will be amplified in the quake's aftermath.
- While Turkey has received an outpouring of support and aid, analysts have warned that Syrian victims may become hostages of Western sanctions imposed against the government amid the country's more than decade-long civil war.
- Extreme winter weather is impacting rescue efforts. Aftershocks are also a potential hazard — at least 125 measuring 4.0 or greater have occurred since the 7.8 magnitude quake struck southern Turkey on Monday, according to the US Geological Survey. Though their frequency and magnitude are decreasing, 5.0 to 6.0+ aftershocks remain possible and bring a risk of additional damage to compromised structures and a continued threat to rescue teams and survivors.
Stay with us for live updates.
07:30pm (BST): Death toll in Turkey rises to 16,170
The death toll from the earthquakes in southeastern Turkey has risen to 16,170, Erdogan says.
Deaths in Turkey and Syria now exceed 19,300, surpassing the death toll from Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011.
5:00pm (BST): Death toll in Turkey tops 14,014: Erdogan
The death toll in Turkey from this week's powerful earthquakes has risen to 14,014, with more than 63,000 injured, Erdogan told reporters during a visit to the quake-hit province of Gaziantep.
He said more than 6,400 buildings had been destroyed and that Turkey aimed to build new three and four-storey buildings in the region within one year.
With the president's latest update, the total number of people killed in Turkey and Syria climbed to 17,172.
First UN aid since quake crosses into northwest Syria from Turkey
The first United Nations aid convoy since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck on Monday has crossed into northwest Syria from Turkey, the UN has confirmed.
Six trucks on Thursday reached Bab al-Hawa, the only border crossing authorised by the UN Security Council for aid delivery, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Al Jazeera.
04:35 pm (BST): 17,000 confirmed dead due to the earthquake in Syria and Turkey
At least 14,000 people have died in Turkey, according to officials, while at least 3,162 have been killed in Syria, reports Al Jazeera.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday conceded "shortcomings" after criticism of his government's response to the massive earthquake that has killed over 16,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
The sprawling scale of the disaster that flattened thousands of buildings, trapping an unknown number of people, has swamped relief operations already hampered by freezing weather.
Survivors have been left to scramble for food and shelter -- and in some cases watch helplessly as their relatives called for rescue, and eventually went silent under the debris.
"My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law's sister are in the ruins. They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life," said Semire Coban, a kindergarten teacher, in Turkey's Hatay.
"We can't reach them. We are trying to talk to them, but they are not responding... We are waiting for help. It has been 48 hours now," she said.
Still, searchers kept pulling survivors from the debris three days after the 7.8 magnitude quake that is already one of the deadliest this century, even as the death toll continues to rise.
As criticism mounted online, Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit spots, quake epicentre Kahramanmaras, and acknowledged problems in the response.
"Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It's not possible to be ready for a disaster like this," he said.
Twitter was also not working on Turkish mobile networks, according to AFP journalists and NetBlocks web monitoring group.
Children saved
The window for rescuers to find survivors is narrowing as the effort nears the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives.
Yet on Wednesday, rescuers pulled children from under a collapsed building in the hard-hit Turkish province of Hatay, where whole stretches of towns have been levelled.
"All of a sudden we heard voices and thanks to the excavator... immediately we heard the voices of three people at the same time," said rescuer Alperen Cetinkaya.
"We are expecting more of them... the chances of getting people out of here alive are very high," he added.
Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Turkey and at least 2,992 in Syria from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the total to 15,383 -- and experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply.
In Brussels, the EU is planning a donors conference in March to mobilise international aid for Syria and Turkey.
"We are now racing against the clock to save lives together," said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Twitter.
"No one should be left alone when a tragedy like this hits a people," von der Leyen said
'People dying every second'
Due to the scale of the damage and the lack of help coming to certain areas, survivors said they felt alone in responding to the disaster.
"Even the buildings that haven't collapsed were severely damaged. There are now more people under the rubble than those above it," a resident named Hassan, who did not provide his full name, said in the rebel-held Syrian town of Jindayris.
"There are around 400-500 people trapped under each collapsed building, with only 10 people trying to pull them out. And there is no machinery," he added.
The White Helmets, leading efforts to rescue people buried under rubble in rebel-held areas of Syria, have appealed for international help in their "race against time".
They have been toiling since the quake to pull survivors out from under the debris of dozens of flattened buildings in northwestern areas of war-torn Syria that remain outside the government's control.
A leading UN official called for the facilitation of aid access to rebel-held areas in the northwest, warning relief stocks will soon be depleted.
"Put politics aside and let us do our humanitarian work," the UN's resident Syria coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told AFP in an interview.
Syria appeals for EU help
The issue of aid to Syria is a delicate one, and the sanctioned government in Damascus made an official plea to the EU for help, the bloc's commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarcic said.
A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals, collapsed the economy and prompted electricity, fuel and water shortages.
The European Commission is "encouraging" EU member countries to respond to Syria's request for medical supplies and food, while monitoring to ensure that any aid "is not diverted" by President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lenarcic noted.
Dozens of nations, including the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived.
The European Union was swift to dispatch rescue teams to Turkey after the massive earthquake struck the country on Monday close to the border with Syria.
But it initially offered only minimal assistance to Syria because of EU sanctions imposed since 2011 on Assad's government over its brutal crackdown on protesters that spiralled into a civil war.
The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world's most active earthquake zones.
Monday's quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in eastern Erzincan province.
In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000.
