At least 21,051 people died, including 17,674 in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria, as a result of the earthquakes that hit southern Turkey on Monday, the latest official figures today show.
A 17-year-old teenager was rescued unharmed this morning after being trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Gaziantep for 94 hours.
While experts claim it’s possible to survive for a week or more under the rubble of thousands of destroyed buildings, hopes of finding people still alive in sub-zero temperatures are dwindling.
Salvation often involves sacrifice and difficult choices.
The Turkish news agency DHA reported the rescue of a 10-year-old child in Antakya, which required doctors to amputate her arm to free her, in a tragedy that had already victimized her parents and three siblings.
In Adiyaman, AP journalists saw someone begging rescuers to look through the rubble of a building where family members were reportedly trapped, with the latter refusing, arguing that no one was alive and that they should give priority to areas with possible survivors .
Turkish authorities said more than 120,000 rescue teams are taking part in the effort, with more than 5,500 vehicles and aid from 95 countries, including Portugal and Brazil.
Gradually, the rush of rescuers and family members sifting through the rubble, occasionally resulting in rescues, begins to shift to a focus on demolishing dangerously unstable structures.
It is not possible to know how many people are still missing in both countries.
In Nurdagi, a town of about 40,000 people nestled between snowy mountains about 56 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter, vast swaths of the city were razed to the ground, with almost no buildings left intact, as even those that did not collapse were heavily damaged. insecure.
In Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the epicenter, a basketball court-sized sports hall served as a makeshift morgue to collect and identify bodies.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which has visited the affected cities for the past two days, has been the target of criticism for a perceived slow response to the tragedy, as the Turkish president prepares to run for re-election on May 14.
The World Health Organization estimates that 23 million people are “potentially exposed, including about five million vulnerable people” and fears a major health crisis, which could cause even more damage than the earthquake.
Humanitarian organizations are particularly concerned about the spread of the cholera epidemic, which has resurfaced in Syria.
Source: DN
