KAHRAMANMARAS/ANTAKYA, Turkey, Feb 8 (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday acknowledged his government’s problems with the initial response to a devastating earthquake in southern Turkey amid anger among the poor left behind and frustration over the slow arrival of the rescue teams.
Erdogan, who is contesting an election in May, said during a visit to the disaster zone that operations are now working normally and promised that no one will be left homeless, as the combined death toll across Turkey and the surrounding area that Syria rose above 11,000.
But across southern Turkey, people are scrambling for temporary shelter and food in the freezing winter, and waiting in anguish at piles of garbage where family and friends can be buried. Rescuers continued to dig out some people alive. Others were found dead.
There are similar scenes and complaints in neighboring Syria, where the impact of the great earthquake on Monday reached the.
The death toll in both countries is expected to rise as hundreds of collapsed buildings in several cities have become graveyards for people who were sleeping in the houses when the quake struck early in the morning.
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In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens of bodies, some covered in sheets and blankets and others in body bags, lined the ground outside a hospital.
Families in southern Turkey and Syria spent a second night in the freezing cold.
Many in the disaster zone are sleeping in their cars or on the streets under blankets, afraid to return to buildings shaken by the 7.8-magnitude quake – Turkey’s deadliest since 1999 – and the second-strongest earthquake later.
“Where are the tents, where are the food trucks?” said Melek, 64, in Antakya, that he did not see any rescue teams. “We survived the earthquake, but we won’t die of hunger or cold here.”
The death toll rose to 8,574 in Turkey on Wednesday. In Syria – already devastated by 11 years of war – the confirmed number rose to more than 2,500 overnight, according to the government and a rescue service operating in the rebel-held northwest.
Turkish authorities released video of the survivors, including a young woman in pyjamas, and an old man covered in dust, an unlit cigarette clutched between his fingers as he was pulled from the debris.
In Aleppo, Syria, staff at Al-Razi hospital treated a man with injured eyes who said more than a dozen relatives, including his father and mother, died when the building collapsed. which they ride.
“We were 16 and we died at 13. My brother, one and a half year old nephew and I got out. Thank God,” he said.
“My father, my mother, my brother, his wife and their four children. My brother’s wife and two children who were with me also died.”
ELECTION EFFECT?
Erdogan, who declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces and sent troops to help, arrived in Kahramanmaras to view the damage and see the rescue and relief effort.
Speaking to reporters, with ambulance sirens wailing in the background, Erdogan said there were problems on the roads and airports but “we are better now”.
“We will get better tomorrow and then. We still have fuel issues … but we will overcome that too,” he said.
However, the disaster has given him a challenge in the May election which is set to be the toughest fight of his two decades in power.
Any perception that the government has failed to address the disaster properly will harm its prospects. On the other hand, analysts say, he can rally national support to respond to the crisis and strengthen his position.
BODIES IN BLANKETS
The earthquake destroyed thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injured tens of thousands, and left countless people homeless.
Entire streets of Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter, were reduced to rubble, drone footage showed, with smoke billowing from fires across the city. Hundreds of tents were set up as shelter in a playground.
Reuters journalists saw about 50 bodies wrapped in blankets on the floor of a sports hall.
Kneeling on the floor, a woman wails in grief and hugs a body wrapped in a blanket
Turkish authorities said about 13.5 million people were affected in an area approximately 450 km (280 miles) from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. In Syria, it killed people as far south as Hama, 250 km from the epicenter.
‘UNDER THE CHAOS’
In Syria, the relief effort is complicated by a conflict that is dividing the country.
Residents of Syrian government-held territory described the authorities’ response as slow, with some areas receiving more aid than others. State news agency SANA quoted Hussein Makhlouf, minister of local administration and environment, as saying the state had opened 180 shelters for displaced people.
In Jandaris in northern Syria, rescue workers and residents said several buildings had collapsed.
Standing around the wreckage of what was once a 32-apartment building, relatives of the people who lived there said they didn’t see anyone get out alive. The lack of heavy equipment to lift the large concrete slabs hampered rescue efforts.
Rescue workers are struggling to reach some of the worst-hit areas, hampered by broken roads, bad weather and a lack of heavy equipment. Some areas do not have fuel and electricity.
A rescue service operating in rebel-held northwest Syria said the death toll had risen to more than 1,280 and more than 2,600 were wounded. Syria’s health minister said the death toll in government-held areas had risen to 1,250.
Across the street from an apartment building in Aleppo that has been reduced to rubble, 25-year-old Youssef has been waiting for two days for news of his father, mother, brother, sister and his son.
He said he heard their voices, and spoke to them, but the ill-equipped rescuers could not reach them.
“I talked to them and I heard their voice, but unfortunately as you can see here they work very slowly and they don’t have enough equipment,” he said.
Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul; Khalil Ashawi in northern Syria; Tom Perry of Beirut; Writing by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Alison Williams
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