Saturday February 18, 2023 | 9:27 a.m.
Rescuers have pulled more survivors from the rubble left by the February 6 quake that tore through parts of Turkey and Syria, even as the chances of finding people alive are dwindling fast. Meanwhile, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu updated the death toll in the country to 39,672, bringing the total death toll in Turkey and Syria to 43,360.
The number is likely to continue to rise as rescue workers recover more bodies from the devastation. The powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake became the deadliest catastrophe in Turkey’s modern history.
Rescuers pulled a survivor from the rubble of a building in the Defne district of Hatay province on Friday, more than 11 days after the powerful earthquake struck. Hakan YasinoÄŸlu, 45, spent 278 hours in the rubble, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. Television footage showed him being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance.
Search teams working overnight also found a woman and two men alive in the quake rubble. The most recent rescues came as crews began removing rubble in cities ravaged by the quake. Neslihan Kilic, 29, a mother of two, was pulled from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras after being trapped for 258 hours, the private DHA news agency reported Thursday night.
In the city of Antioquia, police rescue teams found 12-year-old Osmán alive after removing 17 bodies from a fallen building. “Just when we had no hope anymore, we reached our brother Osman at 260 hours,” team boss Okan Tosun told DHA. An hour later, rescuers reached two men trapped in a collapsed hospital in Antioquia. One of them, Mustafa Avci, used a rescuer’s cell phone to call his brother and ask about his relatives. “Have they all survived?” he asked.
Humanitarian aid
Meanwhile, a total of 178 trucks with aid have crossed the border from Turkey into northwestern Syria since February 9, the UN reported. Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the trucks are carrying items from six UN agencies, including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothing, cholera test kits, medicines essentials and food from the World Food Program.
UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said that according to the latest assessments in northwestern Syria, 50,000 families need tents or emergency shelter, and at least 88,000 need mattresses, thermal blankets and clothing. In addition, according to UN partners, hospitals and medical centers “are overwhelmed and under-resourced,” he added.
FAO said it is working with Turkey to determine the steps to be taken to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector that was damaged by the earthquake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.
“In Syria, the rapid assessments carried out by FAO in the areas affected by the earthquakes indicate a significant impact on agricultural and livestock production capacity, which threatens immediate and long-term food security,” the agency said in a statement.
Syrians come home
The bodies of at least 1,522 Syrians who were living in Turkey have returned to Syria for burial, according to an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that if figures from other smaller crossings are taken into account, the number of quake dead who have returned to Syria to be buried stands at 1,745 people.
Syrian survivors have also started crossing from Turkey. Some 1,795 Syrians crossed from Turkey into Syria on Wednesday, the first day after Turkey allowed quake-affected Syrian refugees to return temporarily to their country without losing their protection status in Turkey, an official at the Bab border crossing said. al-Hawa.
The decision gives Turkish temporary protection card holders residing in earthquake-affected areas the ability to cross into Syria without having to obtain a travel permit from the Turkish authorities.
Syrians with protected status who cross into Syria without permission are normally considered by Turkey to have relinquished their asylum-seeking status and are barred from re-entering Turkey for five years.
Meanwhile. Spain says it will receive some 100 Syrian refugees who are in Turkey. The Migration Minister, José Luis Escrivá, said that the refugees would be those who are considered the most vulnerable and seriously affected by the earthquake.
In this context, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said that the state was caring for 1,589 children who were separated from their families in the earthquake, including 247 who have not yet been identified. He indicated that 953 children had been reunited with their families.
Oktay noted that search and rescue teams were working in fewer than 200 locations, with Hatay province concentrating the largest number.
