Race against time in southern Turley to find missing bodies
Kahramanmaras, Turkey:
Rescuers pulled a seven-month-old baby and a teenage girl from the rubble on Sunday, nearly a week after an earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria and killed more than 28,000 people.
Thousands of rescuers have been scouring flattened areas despite freezing weather, adding to the misery of the millions now in dire need of aid.
Some aid operations were suspended due to security concerns, according to state media, and dozens of people were arrested on charges of looting or trying to defraud victims.
But miraculous tales of survival in the midst of devastation and despair still emerge.
“Is the world out there?” According to a video on state broadcaster TRT Haber, 70-year-old Menekse Tabak asked to applaud and praise God when he was pulled from the rubble in the southern city of Kahramanmaras – the epicenter of Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake.
State media reported that a seven-month-old baby named Hamza was also rescued in Hatay more than 140 hours after the quake, while 13-year-old Esma Sultan was rescued in Gaziantep.
In southern Turkey, families were racing against time to find the bodies of their missing relatives.
“We hear that (the authorities) will not make the bodies wait after a certain period of time, they say they will take them and bury them,” Tuba Yolku said in Kahramanmaras.
Another family huddled together in mourning in a cotton field that had been transformed into a cemetery, where a seemingly endless stream of bodies were being rapidly buried.
26 lakh people affected
The UN has warned that at least 870,000 people across Turkey and Syria are in urgent need of hot food. Up to 5.3 million people may be homeless in Syria alone.
Some 26 million people have been affected by the quake, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, as it launched a flash appeal on Saturday for $42.8 million to deal with immediate health needs.
It warned that dozens of hospitals had been damaged.
Turkey’s disaster agency said more than 32,000 people from Turkish organizations were working on the search and rescue efforts. There are also 8,294 international rescuers.
In the city of Gaziantep, Turkey’s gourmet capital, restaurants are toiling hard among thousands of volunteers to help feed families.
“We want to help,” said Burhan Kagdas, the owner of a local eatery.
“Our colleagues are in a bad situation. Their families are suffering and their homes have been destroyed,” he said.
Cagdas’ own family has been sleeping in cars since Monday in a city where at least 2,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were forced out of unsafe homes.
His Imam Cagdas restaurant is famous for Alinazik eggplant and meat stew and has served up to 4,000 free meals a day since Monday.
Clashes have also been reported and the UN rights office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area – where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate – to allow humanitarian access.
Austrian troops and German rescuers called off their search for several hours in southern Hatte on Saturday, citing the difficult security situation amid crossfire between local groups.
The banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, has announced a temporary halt to fighting to ease recovery work.
A border crossing between Armenia and Turkey also opened on Saturday for the first time in 35 years to allow five trucks carrying food and water into the quake-hit region.
medical aid to aleppo
Aid has been delayed in Syria, where years of conflict have ravaged the health system and parts of the country are under rebel control.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus flew a flight loaded with emergency medical equipment into the earthquake-hit city of Aleppo on Saturday.
Tedros visited damaged areas of the city and met two children who lost their parents in the earthquake.
He tweeted, “There are no words to describe the pain they are going through.”
Damascus said it had approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside its control in Idlib province, and a convoy was expected to leave on Sunday. Later the delivery was postponed without any explanation.
The transport ministry in the Syrian capital said 57 aid planes had landed in the country this week.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged the Security Council to authorize the opening of new cross-border aid points between Turkey and Syria. The council is likely to meet early next week to discuss Syria.
Turkey said it is working on opening two new routes into rebel-held parts of Syria.
anger builds up
Five days of grief and anguish are slowly turning into fury over the government’s response to Turkey’s worst disaster in nearly a century, as well as the poor quality of the buildings.
Officials say 12,141 buildings were either destroyed or seriously damaged in the quake.
Turkish police on Saturday detained 12 people, including contractors, in connection with building collapses in the southeastern provinces of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa.
Officials and doctors said 24,617 people had died in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 28,191.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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