Diminished hopes of recovering survivors from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria

Rescuers in Turkey pulled out more people trapped under the rubble early Saturday, five days after the country’s most devastating earthquake since 1939 struck, but hopes of finding more survivors are dimmed in Turkey and Syria.

In Kahramanmaraş, near the epicenter in southern Turkey, rescue and search operations among the wreckage of homes and buildings appear to have decreased while the number of trucks on the streets to remove debris has increased.

The death toll continues to rise, exceeding 25,300 in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria as a result of the disaster that occurred on Monday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to start work on rebuilding cities “within weeks”, saying hundreds of thousands of buildings are now uninhabitable.

Body bags were spread in the streets of the city of Antioch, where residents put on masks to try to reduce its smell. One of them said, without giving his name, that the general public had joined the rescue effort. “There is chaos, rubble and dead bodies everywhere,” he added.

He reported that his group worked through the night trying to reach a university school that was calling for them from the rubble. But, he added, she had stopped responding to them by morning. And he added, “There are still collapsed buildings in the side streets, and no one has reached them.”

In one of the buildings in Kahramanmaraş, rescue workers dug through concrete slabs to reach a five-year-old girl, and lifted her on a stretcher while chanting.

They said they believed two other survivors were under the same rubble. Although several other people were reported to have been rescued from the rubble on Saturday, including 13-year-old Arda Jan Ovan, few rescue efforts have been successful.

Today, Friday, a woman who was rescued in Turkey died in a hospital. The earthquake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and was followed by several strong aftershocks in Turkey and Syria, is ranked as the seventh deadliest natural disaster this century, surpassing the 2011 Japan earthquake and the tsunami that followed it.

Monday’s earthquake death toll is close to 31,000 killed in an earthquake that shook neighboring Iran in 2003. With the death toll reaching 21,848 in Turkey so far, this earthquake is the deadliest earthquake in the country since 1939.

– Syria

In Syria, where more than 3,500 people have died, people stood near piles of rubble, waiting to learn the fate of their loved ones. “On the first day we slept in the street, on the second day we slept in our cars, and then we slept in other people’s homes,” said Ramadan Suleiman, 28, in the town of Jandris, which was badly affected by the earthquake.

In Aleppo, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the disaster as heartbreaking. “We just brought in some supplies and we look forward to continuing the support,” he told reporters.

Source: AFP