[ad_1]
Families in southern Turkey and northern Syria spent a second night in the cold on Wednesday as overwhelmed rescuers scrambled to pull people from the rubble two days after a massive earthquake that has killed more than 11,000 people.
In Turkey, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital in Hatay province.
Many in the disaster zone have been sleeping in their cars or on the streets under blankets, afraid to return to buildings shaken by the 7.8-magnitude tremor that struck early Monday, Turkey’s deadliest earthquake since 1999.
Rescuers there and in neighboring Syria warned that the death toll would continue to rise as some survivors said help was yet to arrive.
“Where’s the tent, where’s the food truck?” said Melek, 64, in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, adding that he had not seen any rescue team.
“We have not seen food distribution here, unlike previous disasters in our country. We survived the earthquake, but we will die here from hunger or cold.”
Speaking to reporters in Kahramanmaras province near the epicenter, with ambulance sirens playing in the background, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there were problems with roads and the airport, but that everything would be better during the day.
As the scale of the disaster became clearer, the death toll rose to 8,574 in Turkey, Erdogan said.
The initial quake toppled thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injured tens of thousands, and left thousands homeless in Turkey and northern Syria.
Relatives visit the makeshift mortuary
Turkish authorities said around 13.5 million people were affected in an area stretching 450 kilometers from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. Turkey’s disaster management agency said the number of injured was more than 38,000.
Turks walked past hundreds of bodies in stadiums and parking lots across the country on Wednesday, carefully lifting blankets from their faces to try to identify dead relatives.
A Reuters reporter in Kahramanmaras saw about 50 bodies covered with blankets on the floor of a sports hall. Family members search for relatives among the dead.
On the floor of the auditorium, a woman wept bitterly and hugged her body wrapped in a blanket.
Meanwhile, a container fire in Turkey’s southern port of Iskenderun has been brought under control, Turkish maritime authorities said on Wednesday, following a combined firefighting effort from land, sea and air.
Operations at the port were closed until further notice after the fire broke out, and cargo ships were diverted to other ports.
“Delayed ships must be diverted to other facilities as ship handling services cannot be provided,” the authority said in a tweet.
Erdogan has declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. But residents in several devastated Turkish cities have expressed anger and despair at what they say is a slow and inadequate response by authorities.
Turkey’s deadliest earthquake in a generation has presented Erdogan with a huge rescue and reconstruction challenge, which will overshadow May’s presidential election, which is set to be the toughest of his two decades in power.
In Syria, which has been devastated by 11 years of war, the number of confirmed victims rose to more than 2,500 overnight. The earthquake killed people in the southern part of Hama, about 100 kilometers from the epicenter.
In the northern Syrian town of Jandaris, rescue workers and residents said dozens of buildings had collapsed.
Standing around the wreckage of the 32-apartment building, relatives of those who lived there said nothing had been removed. A lack of heavy equipment to remove large concrete slabs is impeding rescue efforts.
Rescue workers have struggled to reach some of the hardest-hit areas, hampered by broken roads, bad weather and a lack of resources and heavy equipment. Some areas are without fuel and electricity.
WATCH | Crisis after crisis: Syrians are fighting for themselves with help not coming:
A rescue worker in Syria said the earthquake was a disaster for people already suffering from their country’s civil war. However, there are signs of hope among the ruins.
The world’s largest earthquake since 2011
Aid officials expressed particular concern about the situation in Syria, where humanitarian needs have been greater than at any time since the outbreak of the conflict that has torn the country apart and hampered aid efforts.
The head of the World Health Organization said rescue efforts were facing a race against time, with the chance of finding survivors every minute and hour.
Several Canadians with ties to Turkey and Syria are still waiting for updates on their loved ones after the devastating earthquake. Meanwhile, community members quickly collected donations of money and supplies to send overseas.
In Syria, rescue services operating in the rebel-held northwest said the death toll had risen to more than 1,280 and more than 2,600 wounded.
“The number is expected to rise significantly as there are hundreds of families under the rubble, more than 50 hours after the earthquake,” the rescue service said on Twitter.
Overnight, Syria’s health minister said the death toll in government-held areas had risen to 1,250, the state-run al-Ikhbariya news outlet reported on its Telegram feed. The number of injured was 2,054, he said.
The area is located above a major fault line and is often shaken by earthquakes. About 18,000 people were killed in a similar powerful earthquake that struck northwestern Turkey in 1999.
The toll in Syria and Turkey has made it the world’s deadliest since 2011, when an earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami, killing nearly 20,000 people. The year before that, more than 100,000 people died in a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti.
[ad_2]
Source link