Turkey, Syria earthquake death toll surpasses 24,000 as dozens of survivors pulled from rubble

Rescuers in Turkey pulled two women alive from the rubble of a collapsed building after they were trapped for 122 hours after the region’s deadliest earthquake in two decades, authorities said Monday.

The death toll surpassed 24,150 in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said authorities needed to respond more quickly to Monday’s massive earthquake.

One of the rescued women, Menekse Tabak, 70, was wrapped in a blanket as rescuers carried her to a waiting ambulance in Kahramanmaras province, images from state news agency Anadolu showed.

The other was a wounded 55-year-old, identified as Masallah Cicek, who was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey’s largest city, the agency said.

Pulled from the wreckage

Sixty-seven people have been clawed from the rubble in the previous 24 hours, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay told reporters overnight, in an effort that drew 31,000 rescuers to the affected areas.

About 80,000 people were hospitalized, while 1.05 million were left homeless by the quake in temporary shelters, he added.

“Our main goal is to ensure that they return to a normal life by sending them a permanent home within a year, and to treat their illness as soon as possible,” said Oktay.

With food shortages amid bleak winter conditions, questions abound for the nation’s leaders about their response.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first reported trip to the affected area since the quake, visiting a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, state media said.

His government approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to the front lines of the country’s 12-year civil war, a move that could speed up aid to millions of desperate people.

7th worst disaster of this century

Earlier, the World Food Program said stockpiles in rebel-held northwest Syria were under pressure as aid efforts complicated the war.

Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake, with several powerful aftershocks in Turkey and Syria, was the seventh-deadliest natural disaster this century, surpassing Japan’s 2011 tremor and tsunami, and approaching the 31,000 deaths from earthquakes in neighboring countries Iran in 2003.

A similarly powerful earthquake in northwestern Turkey in 1999 killed more than 17,000 people.

On Friday, Erdogan visited Turkey’s Adiyaman province, where he admitted the government’s response was not as fast as it could have been.

“Although we have the largest search and rescue team in the world today, the reality is that search efforts are not as fast as we would like,” he said.

Opponents have seized on the issue to attack Erdogan, who is due to be re-elected in a vote on May 14, although it may be delayed due to the disaster.

Erdogan’s toughest challenge

Simmering anger because of the delay in the delivery of aid and the launch of rescue efforts is likely to play into the election.

Even before the quake, the vote was seen as Erdogan’s toughest challenge in his two decades in power. He called for solidarity and condemned what he called “a negative campaign for political gain.”

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of Turkey’s main opposition party, criticized the government’s response.

“The earthquake is huge, but what is bigger than the earthquake is the lack of coordination, lack of planning and incompetence,” he said in a statement.

The death toll in Turkey rose to 20,665 on Saturday, the disaster management agency said. In Syria, more than 3,500 have been killed. Many others remain in ruins.

Hope amidst the ruins

Teams from dozens of countries are among rescuers working day and night in the rubble of thousands of destroyed buildings to free those buried.

In freezing temperatures, they regularly called for silence as they strained to hear the sounds of life from the mangled concrete mound.

In Turkey’s Samandag district, rescuers crouched under concrete slabs and whispered “Insya Allah” – “God willing” – as they carefully reached into the rubble and removed the 10-day-old baby.

Eyes open, the baby, Yagiz Ulas, was wrapped in a thermal blanket and taken to the field hospital. Emergency workers also took the mother, confused and pale but conscious on a stretcher, video footage showed.