istanbul.- Time is running out on Tuesday as thousands of rescue workers dug through rubble in freezing conditions in an increasingly desperate search for survivors, a day after an earthquake killed at least 6,200 people in Turkey and Syria.
“The later people are found under the rubble, the worse the chances of survival,” said Dr. Gerald Rockenschaub, regional director of emergencies for the World Health Organization. The agency warned that the death toll from Monday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, in a region already wracked by war and a refugee crisis, could rise by the thousands.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey declared a three-month state of emergency in 10 quake-hit provinces on Tuesday. “We are face to face with one of the biggest disasters in our region,” he said in a nationally televised address from the capital, Ankara.
The death toll in Turkey rose to 4,544, Erdogan said. Vice President Fuat Oktay said more than 8,000 people had been rescued from under the rubble.
In Syria, where more than a decade of civil war had already created a humanitarian crisis, at least 1,731 people have died, according to the state Health Ministry and the White Helmets relief group. Thousands more were injured across the country. Many Syrian war refugees are also in the earthquake-affected area of Turkey.
Rescue efforts in Syria are complicated by the location of the earthquake zone, which includes land controlled by the government and the opposition. The only crossing between Syria and Turkey approved by the United Nations for the transport of international aid to Syria is closed due to earthquake damage to surrounding roads, according to UN officials. Syria is unable to receive direct aid from many countries due to sanctions against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
A significant fire has broken out among containers at the Turkish port of Iskenderun after the quake, Moller-Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, has said. The Danish company had said on Monday that all its operations at the port had stopped.
The earthquake is already one of the deadliest natural disasters of this century. It was also one of the strongest ever recorded in Turkey, which sits on two fault lines that frequently cause earthquakes. An aftershock on Monday nearly rivaled the original tremor, reaching a magnitude of 7.5.
