KAHRAMARAS, Turkey: Aid workers pulled children from the rubble of the Turkey-Syria earthquake on Saturday as the death toll neared 24,000 and a winter freeze added to the suffering of millions, many He was in desperate need of help.
The United Nations warned that at least 870,000 people in the two countries are in urgent need of food after the earthquake, which displaced 5.3 million people in Syria alone.
Aftershocks from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake have added to the death toll and made the lives of those who survived more difficult.
“When I see the destroyed buildings, the dead bodies, it’s not that I can’t see where I’ll be in two or three years – I can’t imagine where I’ll be tomorrow,” said Fidan, a pensioner from Turkey. Turan said. In the southern city of Antioch, his eyes filled with tears.
“We have lost 60 members of our family,” he said. “Sixty! What can I say? It is God’s will.”
The United Nations World Food Program has appealed for $77 million to provide food for at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 people in Syria.
Of these, 545,000 were internally displaced and 45,000 were refugees.
Human access
The UN rights office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area – where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate – to allow humanitarian access.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, announced a temporary halt in fighting to facilitate reconstruction work.
In rebel-held northwestern Syria, nearly four million people depend on humanitarian aid but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks.
The Syrian government said it had approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside its control.
Only two aid convoys have been able to cross the border from Turkey this week, where authorities are busy with their own massive earthquake relief operation.
A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals and created power and water shortages.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to allow the opening of new cross-border humanitarian aid points between Turkey and Syria. The council will likely meet early next week to discuss Syria.
Turkey said it was working to open two new routes into rebel-held areas of Syria.
The winter freeze has left thousands of people either spending the night in their cars or huddled around makeshift fires that have spread throughout the quake-hit region.
Anger arises.
Five days of grief and sadness over the poor quality of the buildings, as well as the Turkish government’s response to the country’s worst disaster in nearly a century, is slowly turning into anger.
Officials in the country say 12,141 buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged in the earthquake.
Professor Mustafa Erdik of Istanbul-based Bogazici University said the floors were being piled on top of each other, which meant the chances of being found alive were slim.
Police on Friday detained a contractor who was trying to flee the country after his building collapsed in a devastating earthquake.
The earthquake was the most powerful and deadliest since a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in 1939 that killed 33,000 people.
Officials and medical experts said 20,318 people died in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria. The confirmed total now stands at 23,871.
Anger has grown over the Turkish government’s handling of the disaster ahead of elections in June, which have changed the course of the country’s presidential campaign.
“Those who didn’t die from the earthquake have been left to die in the cold,” Hakan Tanriverdi told JEE News in Adyaman province.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted for the first time on Friday that his government had not been able to reach out and help victims “as much as we would have liked”.
Cypriot children
One of the biggest casualties involved 24 Cypriot children aged between 11 and 14 who were in Turkey for a volleyball tournament when the earthquake engulfed their hotel.
