Growing fear over untold numbers buried by Turkey earthquake

Rescuers raced against time early Wednesday to pull survivors out of the rubble before they battled freezing weather two days after an earthquake tore through southern Turkey. United States and northern Syria were ravaged by war. number of deaths climb above 7,700 and is expected to increase further.

The past two days have yielded impressive rescues, including small children emerging from the rubble more than 30 hours after Monday’s pre-dawn quake. But there is also widespread despair and growing anger at the slow pace of rescue efforts in some areas.

“It’s like we woke up from hell,” said Osman Can Taninmis, whose family is still lying under the rubble in Hatay, Turkey’s worst-affected province. “We couldn’t respond to anything at all. Help didn’t come, couldn’t come. We couldn’t contact anyone. Everywhere was destroyed.”

In Syria, residents find babies crying still had the umbilical cord attached to her mother, who had died. The baby was the only member of the family to survive the building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told the AP news agency.

search team from nearly 30 countries and aid commitments poured in. But with damage spreading across several cities and towns – some isolated by the ongoing conflict in Syria – the cries for help from within the rubble have been silenced.

Monday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake and strong aftershocks severed an area of ​​devastation that stretched hundreds of kilometers (miles) through southeastern Turkey and neighboring Syria. The quake toppled thousands of buildings and added misery to an area ravaged by 12 years of civil war and refugee crisis in Syria.

Turkey is home to millions of refugees from the war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last remaining opposition-held enclave, where millions of people rely on humanitarian aid to survive.

Unstable piles of metal and concrete make search efforts dangerous, while freezing temperatures make them more urgent than ever, as concerns grow about people living there. How long can trapped remnants survive in the cold? Snow rolls around rescuers in some parts of Turkey.

The scale of the suffering – and the rescue effort that came with it – is astounding.

Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergency worker for the World Health Organization, said up to 23 million people could be affected in the entire quake-hit region, calling it “a superimposed crisis.” many crises”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 13 million of the country’s 85 million people were affected and that he had declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. Authorities say more than 8,000 people have been pulled from the rubble in Turkey and about 380,000 have taken shelter in government shelters or hotels.

But authorities have faced criticism from residents of hard-hit Hatay, sandwiched between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, who say rescue efforts have slowed. Erdogan’s handling of the crisis could weigh heavily on elections scheduled for May, and his office has dismissed the criticism as disinformation.

Nurgul Atay told the AP news agency she could hear her mother’s voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Antakya city, the capital of Turkey’s Hatay province. But the rescue force did not have the heavy equipment needed to rescue her.

“If only we could lift the concrete slab, we would be able to reach her,” she said. “My mother is already 70 years old, she won’t be able to last long.”

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 1,647 people had been killed in Hatay alone, the highest number of any Turkish province. At least 1,846 people were rescued there as of Tuesday night, he said. Hatay’s airport was closed after the earthquake destroyed the runway, complicating rescue efforts.

Meanwhile, in Syria, Aid efforts are thwarted by the ongoing fighting and the isolation of the rebel-held area along the border, which is besieged by Russian-backed government forces. Syria itself is a country abandoned internationally under Western sanctions related to the war.

Volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets have years of experience rescuing people from buildings destroyed by Syrian and Russian air strikes in rebel-held territory, but they said that the earthquake was beyond their means.

Mounir al-Mostafa, deputy leader of the White Helmets, said it can effectively respond to up to 30 locations at once but now faces more than 700 calls for help.

“Teams are at those locations, but the machinery and equipment available are not enough,” he said, adding that the first 72 hours are crucial to any rescue effort.

The United Nations said it was “exploring all avenues” to resupply the rebel-held northwest.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the road leading to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, the only gateway through which UN aid is allowed into the rebel-held area, was damaged. earthquake damage, disrupting transportation.

Dujarric said the United Nations was preparing a convoy to cross the line of conflict in Syria. But that will likely require approval from the government of President Bashar Assad, which has besieged rebel-held areas throughout the civil war.

Turkey has a large number of troops in the border area and has tasked the army with assisting with rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay province.

A navy ship docked Tuesday at the provincial port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to a nearby city.

A massive fire at the port, caused by overturned containers in the earthquake, created thick plumes of black smoke in the sky. The Defense Department said the fire had been extinguished with the help of military aircraft, but live footage broadcast by CNN Turk showed the blaze still burning.

Vice President Fuat Oktoy said at least 5,894 people had died from the earthquake in Turkey, with another 34,810 injured.

The death toll in government-controlled areas of Syria has risen to 812, with about 1,400 injured, the Health Ministry said. According to the White Helmets, at least 1,020 people have been killed in the rebel-held northwest, with more than 2,300 wounded.

This area lies on top of major fault lines and frequently shaken by earthquakes. About 18,000 people were killed in similar strong earthquakes that struck northwestern Turkey in 1999.