Turkey-Syria earthquake is region’s ‘worst event in 100 years’ as death toll passes 24,000 – latest updates
The number of people to have died in Syria is reported to be 3,553, according to the Agence France-Presse, bringing the combined number of deaths across both regions to 24,596.
Rescue efforts continue as UN warns hundreds of thousands of people urgently need food in wake of disaster
Earthquake ‘worst event in 100 years in this region’ – UN aid chief
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths described on Saturday the devastating earthquake that hit southern Turkey and north-west Syria as the “worst event in 100 years in this region”.
Speaking during a news briefing in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş, Griffiths also described Turkey’s response to the disaster as “extraordinary”.
He also told Reuters he hoped in Syria aid would go to both government and opposition-held areas, but that things with this regard were “not clear yet”.
The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, arrived on Saturday in Syria’s quake-stricken city of Aleppo, state media reported.
Tedros “arrived at Aleppo airport to tour some hospitals and shelters with [Syria’s] health minister and the governor of Aleppo”, the official news agency Sana said.
Upon his arrival, Tedros said he was accompanying “emergency medical supplies of around 37 metric tons”.
“We are very happy that we could come with the supplies,” he told reporters at Aleppo airport.
“This is the first supply we are sending.”
He added that the WHO would continue to provide emergency medical services and bring in more emergency supplies necessary for “trauma management”.
“Tomorrow, there will be another round with more than 30 metric tonnes,” he said, according to Agency France-Presse.
He expressed concern over the after-effects of the earthquake, especially the disruption of services.
“People are exposed to diarrhoeal diseases … and other health problems especially mental health problems,” he said.
“We will work together to address the impact of the earthquake, not only the emergency services during the earthquake.”
Turkey death toll rises to 21,043
The death toll in Turkey following Monday’s earthquake has risen to 21,043, according to President Tayyip Erdoğan.
The number of people to have died in Syria is reported to be 3,553, according to the Agence France-Presse, bringing the combined number of deaths across both regions to 24,596.
However, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (Afad) said on Saturday the death toll in Turkey had risen to 20,937, which would bring the combined number of deaths across both regions to 24,596.
The figures can vary depending on the source.
It comes as Erdoğan warned the state would punish people involved in looting and other crimes in the earthquake area.
A woman died in hospital on Saturday a day after she was pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed building in southern Turkey, where she had been trapped for 104 hours since Monday’s devastating earthquake, rescuers said.
German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman out of the rubble in the town of Kırıkhan in southern Turkey on Friday.
They had hailed her survival a “miracle”, Reuters reports.
Steven Bayer, the leader of German International Search and Rescue team said:
We have just learned from the brother and sister that Zeynep sadly passed away in the hospital. We have just informed the team that she has unfortunately passed away and are now processing this in the team.”
The team doctor said the risks were particularly high during the first 48 hours after such complicated rescue operation.
Peter Kaub said:
After all, she was really buried for over 100 hours. Not trapped, but buried.”
But he stressed the rescuers’ effort was not in vain.
To be able to die in the arms of one’s family and to be able to live the last moments before that, every second counts. After 10 hours, after we started, she had first human contact and could talk to the translator and to us, then even to her family. And in the end, her family was able to hold her in their arms.”
Kahraman’s family told Reuters earlier that rescuers had arrived two days after Monday’s quake.
The German workers made contact with the woman while she was still deep inside the rubble and kept her hydrated through a hose.
At one point they helped her sister climb down a ladder close to Zeynep’s position to speak to her.
Earthquake ‘worst event in 100 years in this region’ – UN aid chief
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths described on Saturday the devastating earthquake that hit southern Turkey and north-west Syria as the “worst event in 100 years in this region”.
Speaking during a news briefing in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş, Griffiths also described Turkey’s response to the disaster as “extraordinary”.
He also told Reuters he hoped in Syria aid would go to both government and opposition-held areas, but that things with this regard were “not clear yet.”
Two women rescued from rubble in Turkey, authorities say
Rescuers in Turkey pulled two women alive from the rubble of collapsed buildings after they were been trapped for 122 hours following the region’s deadliest quake in two decades, authorities said on Saturday.
The death toll exceeded 24,150 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria a day after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said authorities should have reacted faster to Monday’s huge earthquake.
One of the rescued women, Menekse Tabak, 70, was swaddled in a blanket while rescuers carried her to a waiting ambulance in the province of Kahramanmaraş, images from state news agency Anadolu showed.
The other was an injured 55-year-old, identified as Masallah Cicek, who was brought out from the debris of a collapsed building in Diyarbakır, the largest city in south-east Turkey, the agency said.
About 80,000 people were being treated in hospital, while 1.05 million left homeless by the quakes huddled in temporary shelters, the Turkish vice-president, Fuat Oktay, told reporters overnight.
He said:
Our main goal is to ensure that they return to a normal life by delivering permanent housing to them within one year, and that they heal their pain as soon as possible.”
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, made his first reported trip to affected areas since the quake, visiting a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, state media said.
His government approved deliveries of humanitarian aid across the front lines of the country’s 12-year civil war, a move that could speed help for millions of desperate people, Reuters reports.
Energy company to send two humanitarian aid ships to Hatay
Turkish energy company Karadeniz Holding said on Saturday it would send two humanitarian aid ships that can each house 1,500 people, to help the relief effort in the southern province of Hatay, Reuters reports.
“The company is working with the authorities to send lifeships Suheyla Sultan and Rauf Bey to Iskenderun-Hatay,” the company said, adding this would be its first humanitarian mission.
The so-called lifeships, built for humanitarian aid missions, have accommodation, fridges, TVs and heating, as well as facilities for education, healthcare and food, the company said.
In a statement, it added:
We focused all our energy to this project to serve people in the area impacted by the earthquake. We aim to provide a safe haven to them as soon as possible.”
Karadeniz Holding is known for its 36 floating powerplants that produce electricity around the world.
‘Hard to imagine a more complex emergency’ – UN on Syria
More from Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who spoke to the BBC earlier.
He said that it was “hard to imagine a more complex emergency” in Syria.
You’re dealing with a country that has been in conflict for 12 years, where already before this humanitarian emergency there was a long-standing humanitarian crisis with more than four million people needing aid.
A lot of the infrastructure is either destroyed or damaged and that includes roads and bridges. Layered on top of that, you have an extremely challenging security situation and you have areas where we have to negotiate access between the government and between rebels. All of that in the middle of winter.”
Referring to the situation in Syria, he said:
We’re trying to get more aid and we’re working as quickly as possible. We’re extremely aware of the suffering of the people of Syria.”
He said he was not interested in “political finger-pointing”.
We are working closely with the government of Syria in Damascus. They have been helpful to us in the last few days in terms of approving visas, and approving a number of things that we need. We also need to negotiate with the rebels.”
He added that UN staff had also been lost in the earthquake.
The humanitarian structure that was in place in southern Turkey and in north west Syria was also hit by the earthquakes…We lost two staff members.”
At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in Turkey and Syria after the earthquake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.
Aftershocks following Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors, Agence France-Presse reports.
Fidan Turan, a pensioner in Turkey’s southern city of Antakya, said:
When I see the destroyed buildings, the bodies, it’s not that I can’t see where I will be in two or three years – I can’t imagine where I’ll be tomorrow.”
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that negotiations were continuing to gain access to more areas in Syria.
He said:
Our message is clear, it’s time to put all politics aside. Just focus on the men, women and children who desperately need help in Syria and in southern Turkey.”
He added:
Wherever we work we have to work with the authorities in charge. That’s just the way that UN humanitarian aid is structured. So in the rebel-held territories we work with the authorities there, in the government-held areas we work with the government.”
Responding to criticism of the UN’s response to the urgent need in Syria following the earthquake, he added:
I think if I was standing in the middle of devastation and my communit had been hit I would be unhappy and I would be critical because aid never comes quickly enough. But I can tell you that the UN stands with the people of Syria, whether they live in rebel territories, whether they live in government-held territories.”
He called for “solidarity” in the relief effort.
Here are some images coming to us from Turkey.
‘My eyes were full of tears’
Adem Altan can’t compare the picture he took on a cold morning this week with any of the tens of thousands he has shot in his 41 years as a photojournalist.
Shortly after driving from Ankara to the southern Turkish town of Kahramanmaraş on Tuesday, and picking his way through the aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, he came across a collapsed apartment complex.
Families were digging through the rubble in search of their buried loved ones, but it was a man in an orange coat who sat quietly amid the debris who caught Altan’s eye.
“When I looked closer, I saw that he was holding a hand,” says the photographer, “so I began to take photographs.”
The man was called Mesut Hançer and the hand he was holding was that of his 15-year-old daughter, Irmak, who had been killed in her bed when the quake brought the building down. Hançer spotted Altan. And then he asked him to carry on.
Turkey death toll rises to 20,655
The death toll in Turkey from this week’s devastating earthquakes has risen to 20,665, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (Afad) said on Saturday.
It said that nearly 93,000 victims have been evacuated from the quake zone in southern Turkey and that more than 166,000 personnel were involved in the rescue and relief efforts.
There have been 1,891 aftershocks since the first quake early on Monday, it added.
Updated at 08.16 GMT
Summary and welcome
Good morning and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the fallout from the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday.
The confirmed death toll now stands at 24,208. Officials and medics said 20,665 people had died in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria.
Rescue efforts are continuing in freezing conditions as hopes of finding more survivors are fading.
Here are the other most recent developments:
Rescuers continued to pull survivors – including a newborn baby – from the rubble 100 hours after an earthquake. In Samandağ in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, a 10-day-old boy named Yagiz was retrieved from a ruined building overnight, while in Kırıkhan, German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman alive out of the rubble more than 104 hours after she was buried and carried her to a waiting ambulance.
At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has made up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.
The UN’s rights chief called for an immediate ceasefire in Syria so aid could reach all victims of the earthquake. Four million people in the rebel-held north-west rely 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 quake-hit areas outside its control. A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals and prompted electricity and water shortages.
The International Organization for Migration said on Friday the 14 aid trucks bound for north-west Syria were carrying desperately needed heaters, tents, blankets and other supplies. This is an area where civil war has left 90% of the population – about 4 million people – relying on aid even before the quakes struck.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, conceded for the first time on Friday that his government was not able to reach and help the victims “as quickly as we had desired”.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
Guardian News & Media Limited