ANTAKYA/ELBISTAN, Turkey, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Rescuers pulled a woman alive from a collapsed building in Turkey on Monday and another team dug a tunnel to reach what was believed to be a trapped grandmother, mother and 30- one-day-old child, broadcaster CNN Turk reported.
A week after a major earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, the death toll has risen to nearly 34,000 and looks set to continue to rise as hopes of finding any survivors lost.
But CNN Turk reported that Sibel Kaya, 40, survived in the southern province of Gaziantep, about 170 hours after the first of two major earthquakes struck the region.
Rescue workers in Kahramanmaras also made contact with three survivors, believed to be a mother, daughter and child, in the ruins of a building, the broadcaster reported.
The number in both countries rose to nearly 34,000 on Monday.
Turkey’s deadliest earthquake since 1939 killed 29,605 people there. More than 4,300 people were reported killed and 7,600 wounded in northwestern Syria on Sunday, a UN agency said.
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In Kahramamaras, rescuers hoping to reach the three survivors include a Turkish military team, miners and Spanish firefighters who were first alerted that there was life in the rubble by a search dog, the official said. by engineer Halil Kaya.
A thermal scan indicated that there were people alive, about five meters inside the building, and then a muffled sound was detected, Kaya told the broadcaster.
The miners excavated about three meters through the adjacent building that was still standing, installing support beams as they went.
“When we said knock on the wall if you can hear us, we heard a soft tap,” he said.
“Our colleagues here are all working for 24 hours without sleep … We are all here until we get people out of there.”
On Sunday, rescue teams from Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus pulled one person alive from a collapsed building in Turkey, about 160 hours after the earthquake, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said.
SECURITY CONCERNS
In a central district of one of the worst-hit cities, Antakya in southern Turkey, business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise being stolen by looters.
Residents and aid workers from other towns spoke of a worsening security situation, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being looted.
Amid concerns about hygiene and the spread of infection in the region, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said last weekend that rabies and tetanus vaccines had been sent to the earthquake zone and that mobile pharmacies had begun to operate there.
[1/29] A scene of destruction after an earthquake in the town of Kahramanmaras, Turkey February 10, 2023. REUTERS/Issam Abdallah
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the government would deal firmly with the thieves, as he faced questions about his response to the earthquake ahead of elections scheduled for June. most difficult in his two decades in power.
The earthquake is now the sixth deadliest natural disaster this century, behind the 2005 earthquake that killed at least 73,000 in Pakistan.
A father and daughter, a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among other survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Turkey on Sunday, but such sight has become rare because the number of dead has steadily increased.
At a funeral near Reyhanli, veiled women wailed and beat their breasts as bodies were unloaded from trucks – some in closed wooden coffins, others in bare coffins. , and some were just wrapped in blankets.
Some residents sought to salvage what they could from the wreckage.
In Elbistan, the epicenter of the aftershock was almost as strong as the initial 7.8 magnitude quake on Monday, 32-year-old mobile shop owner Mustafa Bahcivan said he has been coming to the town ever since. On Sunday, he sifted through the trash looking for any of his phones that might still be for sale.
“It used to be one of the busiest streets. Now it’s completely gone,” he said.
SYRIA AID COMPLICATED IN THE WAR YEARS
In Syria, the disaster has hit hard in the rebel-held northwest, leaving many homeless people who have been displaced many times over in a decade-long civil war. The region receives less aid compared to government-held areas.
“Right now we are failing the people in northwest Syria,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Twitter from the Turkey-Syria border, where only one crossing is open for supplies. UN assistance.
“They rightly feel left out,” Griffiths said, adding that he is focused on responding to that quickly.
The United States calls on the Syrian government and all other parties to provide immediate humanitarian access to all those in need.
Earthquake aid from government-held regions to territory controlled by hardline opposition groups has been hampered by issues with the approval of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which controls most of region, a UN spokesperson.
An HTS source in Idlib told Reuters that the group would not allow any shipments from government-held areas and that aid was coming from Turkey to the north.
The United Nations hopes to increase cross-border operations by opening two more border points between Turkey and Syria held by the opposition for the delivery of aid, spokesman Jens Laerke said. .
UN Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said in Damascus that the United Nations is mobilizing funds to support Syria. “We are trying to tell everyone: Put politics aside, this is the time to unite behind a common effort to support the Syrian people,” he said.
Turkey said on Sunday about 80,000 people were in hospital, and more than 1 million in temporary shelters.
Reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen in Antakya and Henriette Chacar in Elbistan; Additional reporting by Umit Bektas in Antakya, Maya Gebeily in Adana, Daren Butler and Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul, Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Timour Azhari in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Stephen Coates and Michael Georgy; Editing by Jane Merriman, Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel.
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