More than 20,000 people died as a result of the violent earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday, according to an official toll published Thursday evening.
According to the Turkish Disaster Management Authority, 17,134 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble so far, while 3,317 bodies have been counted in Syria, according to the latest official toll and medical sources, bringing the death toll to 20,451.
The Turkish Disaster Management Authority counted 70,347 wounded.
The World Health Organization warned that the number of those affected by the earthquake may reach 23 million people, including in Syria, of whom about five million are in a fragile situation.
On Wednesday, a United Nations official warned that the organization’s stockpile in northwest Syria could barely feed 100,000 people for a week.
Meanwhile, the European Commissioner Janiz Lenarcic announced that Syria had submitted an official request for assistance from the European Union after the earthquake.
After Damascus submitted its request through the European Union’s civil protection mechanism, the European Commission, according to Lenarcic, called on European countries to “respond positively to this request.”
Humanitarian aid destined for northwestern Syria is usually transported from Turkey through Bab al-Hawa, the only crossing point guaranteed by a Security Council resolution on cross-border aid.
On Thursday, the World Bank announced $1.78 billion in aid to Turkey in support of rescue and recovery efforts after the massive earthquake that shook it and neighboring Syria, killing more than 20,000 people.
“We are providing immediate assistance and preparing for a rapid assessment of the immediate and overwhelming field needs,” World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement.
On Thursday, the UN Special Envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, called for “non-politicization” of aid to the Syrian population severely affected by Monday’s earthquake, adding that he had raised the issue with representatives of the United States and the European Union.
France then announced that it would allocate urgent aid to the population of Syria amounting to 12 million euros, following the violent earthquake.
In turn, London announced additional financial assistance of no less than 3.4 million euros, bringing the total to about 4.3 million euros allocated to the White Helmets, the civil defense operating in areas outside the control of Damascus.
Two additional border crossings
“The destruction in Aleppo, Homs, Lattakia and in other areas and in the countryside of these governorates is massive, but we also know that the destruction in the northwest of the country is also massive and we have to get there in order to assess it,” the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Syria, Al-Mustafa bin Al-Malih, told AFP on Wednesday. .
For its part, Turkey announced that it is working to open two border crossings with Syria to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to its neighbor.
