The death toll from this week’s earthquake in southeastern Turkey has surpassed that of the devastating İzmit earthquake in 1999, reflecting the scale of the disaster as rescue workers continue to pull bodies from the rubble.
More than 19,300 people have been killed in Turkey and neighboring Syria, according to the latest figures released on Thursday by authorities in the affected regions. This takes the death toll above the 17,118 recorded for the massive earthquake that devastated northwestern Turkey nearly 25 years ago.
The earthquake in İzmit, about 70 miles from Istanbul, carried a particular resonance in Turkey because it was the worst in the living memory of many people. A massive earthquake in 1939 that struck Erzincan in the east of the country killed nearly 33,000 people.
The 1999 riots also sparked a national conversation in Turkey about building standards, which has flared up this week as seismologists and engineers say the loss of life has increased due to the poor quality of construction in the affected areas.
On Thursday in sub-zero temperatures, rescuers raced to find people buried in the rubble as their chances of survival dwindled. In Turkey’s Hatay province, an international team pulled the girl and her father from a flat block of flats just before 7 a.m. local time as news channels broadcast the rescue.
In a sign of progress in helping the Syrian rescue effort, a UN convoy of six trucks on Thursday entered from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossing, the first UN aid shipment to war-torn northern Syria since the earthquake.
The crossing, which is a vital lifeline for 4 million people in Syria’s Idlib province, one of the last enclaves for the opposition fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the 12-year civil war, has been closed due to damage to the road and others. infrastructure.
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However, rescue efforts are ongoing in both countries as the death toll continues to rise. The death toll in Turkey reached 16,170 while in Syria at least 3,162 people were killed, according to government and volunteer rescuers in opposition-held areas. That number brings the death toll to 19,332.
The damage in Turkey spanned more than 300 miles and 10 provinces, prompting rescue efforts. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used a speech from the disaster area on Thursday to hit back at critics of the handling of Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake and was followed by another 7.5-magnitude tremor.
Speaking in the city of Gaziantep, not far from the epicenter, Erdoğan said there were “people who are trying to turn the process into something [their] political advantage. . . My people, my citizens will not allow this abuse.
Erdoğan’s statement came as opposition parties and some in the affected areas strongly criticized the government’s response to the quake for being too slow and disorganized. Germany-based Freedom Rapid Response Media said a photojournalist who took pictures in the earthquake zone and a media commentator in Istanbul were detained this week.
Turkish police detained 31 people, nine of whom were detained, for “sharing provocative posts aimed at intimidating and panicking citizens on social media platforms”, according to a statement from the national police agency posted on Twitter.
Turkey warned Twitter on Wednesday that it is responsible for curbing disinformation on the platform. Access to the social media website was blocked for several hours on Wednesday.
Erdoğan, who in May faces his toughest election in two decades in power, insisted in speeches in recent days that his government had done everything it could to limit the fallout from the earthquake. “Since there was an earthquake. . . country, with all our institutions, [were] in the field,” he said on Thursday.
Additional reporting by Andrew England in London