KAHRAMANMARAS: Rescuers pulled a seven-month-old baby and a teenage girl from the rubble on Sunday, nearly a week after a powerful earthquake struck vast areas of Turkey and Syria that killed more than 28,000 people.
UN relief chief Martin Griffiths has condemned the failure to provide adequate aid for victims in war-torn northwest Syria, warning that the death toll is likely to at least double.
“We have disappointed the people in northwestern Syria so far. They really feel left out. “Looking for international help that has not yet arrived,” Griffiths said on Twitter.
“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as quickly as possible.”
Griffiths arrived in southern Turkey on Saturday to assess the quake’s damage, telling Sky News he expected the death toll to be “double or higher” as the chances of survivors dwindled with each passing day .
Thousands of rescuers continue to scour flattened neighborhoods in freezing weather, adding to the misery of millions of people now in dire need of assistance.
Some aid operations were suspended due to security concerns, according to state media, and dozens of people have been arrested for looting or trying to defraud victims.
But miraculous tales of survival nevertheless emerged.
“Is the world out there?” asked Menekse Tabak, 70, as he was pulled out of concrete in the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, according to a video on state broadcaster TRT Haber.
State media reported that a seven-month-old baby named Hamza was rescued in southern Hatay province more than 140 hours after the quake, while 13-year-old Esma Sultan was also rescued in Gaziantep.
Families in southern Turkey were racing against time to find the bodies of their missing relatives.
“We hear that (the authorities) will not make the bodies wait after a certain period of time, they say they will take them and bury them,” Tuba Yolku said in Kahramanmaras.
Another family huddled together in grief in a cotton field that had been turned into a cemetery, where an endless stream of bodies hurriedly arrived for burial.
UN says millions are ‘homeless’
The UN has warned that at least 870,000 people in Turkey and Syria are in urgent need of hot food. Up to 5.3 million people may be homeless in Syria alone.
Some 26 million people have been affected by the earthquake, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday, as it appealed for $42.8 million to deal with immediate health needs as dozens of hospitals were damaged.
Turkey’s disaster agency said more than 32,000 people from Turkish organizations were working on the search and rescue efforts, along with 8,294 international rescue workers.
“Our co-workers are in bad shape. Their families are suffering and their homes have been destroyed,” said Burhan Cagdas, the son of a diner owner in Gaziantep, which has served more than 4,000 free meals a day since the tragedy.
His own family has been sleeping in cars since Monday in the city where at least 2,000 people have died and tens of thousands have been forced out of unsafe homes.
Clashes have also been reported and the UN rights office on Friday urged all parties in the affected area – where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate – to allow humanitarian access.
Austrian troops and German rescue workers called off their search for several hours in Hatte on Saturday, citing tight security amid crossfire between local groups.
The banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, has announced a temporary halt to fighting to ease recovery work.
On Sunday, a convoy of ten UN trucks reached northwest Syria from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, an area outside the central government’s control in Damascus, according to an AFP correspondent.
The trucks were loaded with shelter kits including plastic sheeting, ropes and screws and nails for the tents, as well as blankets, mattresses and carpets.
A border crossing between Armenia and Turkey opened on Saturday for the first time in 35 years to allow five trucks carrying food and water into the quake-hit region.
Slow aid flow to Syria
Aid has been delayed in Syria, where years of conflict have devastated the health care system and parts of the country are under the control of rebels battling President Bashar Assad’s government, which is under Western sanctions.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus flew a flight loaded with emergency medical equipment into the earthquake-hit city of Aleppo on Saturday.
Damascus said it had approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside its control in Idlib province and a convoy was expected to leave on Sunday, although the delivery was later postponed without explanation .
The transport ministry said 57 aid planes had landed in Syria this week.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged the Security Council to authorize the opening of new cross-border aid points between Turkey and Syria, with a meeting to discuss Syria in the coming days.
Turkiye said it is working on opening two new routes into rebel-held parts of Syria.
But after days of grief and anguish, there is growing anger in Turkey over the poor quality of buildings as well as the government’s response to the country’s worst disaster in nearly a century.
Officials say 12,141 buildings were either destroyed or seriously damaged in the quake.
Turkish police reportedly detained 12 people, including contractors, over collapsed buildings in the southeastern provinces of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa on Saturday.
Officials and doctors said 24,617 people had died in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 28,191.