Rescue efforts continue as UN warns hundreds of thousands of people urgently need food in wake of disaster
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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.
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 northwest 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.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan 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
