Twenty people were killed or missing on Wednesday in floods that swept through two southeastern provinces of Turkey already hit by the devastating earthquake on February 6, adding to the anguish of survivors.
Twelve people lost their lives in the city of Sanliurfa, including five Syrians found dead in the basement of a building and two others died in neighboring Adiyaman province, including a 1.5-year-old baby. Suleyman Soylu reported. Five people are missing.
160 rescuers and divers sent to the region
More than 160 rescuers and divers have been sent to the region, the minister said. Video footage shows villages overrun by torrential, muddy waters.
The provinces of Adiyaman and neighboring Malatya province, hard hit by the rains, are among the hardest hit and suffered significant destruction during the quake. At least one of the victims killed in Adiyaman was inside a container converted into emergency accommodation when it was trapped by the floodwaters, according to the official Anadolu agency. In one of the videos filmed in Malatya province, the water level rose around the white tents where earthquake survivors are sheltering.
Some two million earthquake survivors have been temporarily housed in tents and container villages in Turkey’s eleven earthquake-affected provinces.
48,500 people killed by the earthquake in Turkey
According to the Sanliurfa governorate and images broadcast by the private channel NTV, torrential rains also invaded the ground floor of one of the main hospitals in the province, including an intensive care unit, forcing doctors to transfer patients. The images show the avenues of Sanliurfa, a large city located 50 kilometers as the crow flies from the Syrian border, transformed into brownish torrents swept away by a chaos of cars and trucks.
The earthquake on February 6 killed almost 48,500 people and affected 13.5 million people, or almost a sixth of the Turkish population, according to the latest report from the authorities. In the campaign for his re-election on May 14, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was again on Sunday in the earthquake zone that he visited frequently, promised this Wednesday to build 650,000 homes as soon as possible in the provinces affected by the earthquake.
Source: BFM TV
