In opposition-held Syria, the Syrian Civil Defense Forces, also known as the White Helmets, reported only a recovery of the dead on Friday, including whole family in the city of Salqin and a child in the town of Jinderes. The group – which operates with far fewer resources than Turkish rescuers – continues to dig though, sometimes with their bare hands, as the death toll between the two countries exceeds 23,000.
Fourteen aid trucks entered northwestern Syria from Turkey on Friday, the largest delivery to cross the enclave since earthquakes flattened entire neighborhoods on both sides of the border on Monday . An initial UN aid convoy entered the area on Thursday. UN officials blamed damaged roads, fuel shortages and security issues for the delayed response.
In a news conference on Friday, Raed al Saleh, director of the White Helmets, criticized the international community for not doing anything to help northwestern Syria.
The United Nations “does not exist [been] give anything” to aid the group’s rescue efforts, he said, calling for a UN investigation into why international aid was reaching government-held regions but not rebel-held areas. rebel Anything new The aid coming in will not affect rescue operations, which are slowing down, he said. Instead, the aid will go to the removal of dilapidated and unstable buildings.
However, in some villages, the search continues.
“The search continues, and the hope of life begins to disappear,” the group tweeted on Friday.
Rescue efforts have been slowed in some areas by winter weather, heavy rains, and, in a Syrian baryo, a bust dam that caused widespread flooding.
Planes carrying aid from Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Libya arrived at government-controlled airports in Syria on Friday to support the Syrian government’s relief efforts, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported. .
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited government-held Aleppo with his wife, Asma, in his first public visit to the disaster zone since the earthquakes. Images shared by the government show them meeting patients at a hospital in the war-torn city, where rescue operations are underway.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, visited devastated regions in the south of his country, where he described the earthquakes as the “disaster of the century.” More than 100,000 people – including soldiers, police officers, firefighters and aid workers – have been called into action in Turkey, and nearly 100 countries have offered help.
More than 250 rescued children in Turkey are still separated from their families, Turkish officials said Friday.
Turkish authorities on Friday detained Mehmet Yasar Coskun, the developer of a luxury apartment complex in the southern city of Antakya that collapsed during the earthquakes, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The 12-story apartment complex, called Renaissance Residence, includes 250 condominiums, according to local media reports.
Aerial photos circulating on social media showed a catastrophic collapse, with several sections of the complex knocked to the ground, although other nearby apartment blocks remained standing. Hundreds of people are feared trapped in the rubble. Coskun tried to travel from Istanbul to Montenegro on Friday night, and was ordered detained by an Istanbul prosecutor, Anadolu said.
The U.S. military has begun sending forces to help with earthquake relief in Turkey, U.S. officials said Friday, with a Navy headquarters overseeing the mission and a Marine Corps general arriving in soil to check the extent of support required.
It was not immediately clear how the U.S. military would also help in Syria, where the United States maintains a limited counterterrorism mission in the northeastern corner of the country.
Two US urban search and rescue teams have been working for the past 48 hours “day and night” to help recover victims in the devastated Turkish city of Adiyaman, Jeffry L. Flake, the US Ambassador to Turkey, said in a brief interview on Friday , detailing the Biden administration’s efforts to help the Turkish government as it grapples with the country’s worst disaster in decades.
The US teams, based in Fairfax, VA and Los Angeles, joined several other foreign rescue teams, including a large contingent from Algeria, which toured the disaster areas in the southern and southeastern Turkey.
American rescue teams include 160 personnel, a dozen dogs and 170,000 pounds of equipment and “are making good progress,” the ambassador said.
US military helicopters, including heavy-lift rotary wing helicopters and Blackhawks, transported relief workers from Incirlik Air Base to the affected provinces; additional helicopters are scheduled to arrive at the base “in the coming days,” Flake said.
A US field hospital was also set up in Hatay, another hard-hit province, in coordination with Samaritan’s Purse, a disaster relief organization.
US financial aid is also being allocated to relief efforts in Syria, both in government-controlled and rebel-held parts of the country, through “partner organizations,” Flake said. It is unclear how much of the aid package, worth $85 million, will be allocated to Syria, which has been torn apart by civil war as well as western sanctions. The Treasury Department on Thursday issued a general license authorizing transactions related to earthquake relief in Syria for six months.
At least eight US citizens died in the earthquakes, John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, said in a briefing on Friday.
Sivanka Dhanapala, the UN refugee agency’s representative in Syria, said on Friday that access to northwestern Syria was affected by damage from the earthquake. More than 5.3 million affected people in Syria are in need of shelter, and the agency is now focusing on life-saving measures including the distribution of tents for the displaced.
O’Grady reports from Dahab, Egypt. Fahim reports from Istanbul. Parker reported from Washington. Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul, Dan Lamothe in Washington, Ellen Francis in London and Niha Masih in Seoul contributed to this report.
