Finance
According to authorities, the number of people killed in the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 has risen to at least 23,831 as search and rescue efforts continued for a sixth consecutive day on Saturday to find more survivors.
According to the most recent update from Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), the overall death toll now stands at 20,318, with 80,052 reported injuries, according to Anadolu News Agency.
More than 13 million people were affected by the 7.7- and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes that struck Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa provinces.
According to CNN, the total number of people killed in Syria is 3,513.
According to the volunteer organization Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, 2,166 people were killed in rebel-held areas of the country’s northwest.
Meanwhile, the Syrian state media reported 1,347 deaths in government-controlled areas of the war-torn country.
The delivery of critical supplies to earthquake-ravaged rebel-held areas in northern and northwest Syria has been hampered by a protracted civil war between opposition groups and the Syrian government.
According to the Xinhua news agency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged on Friday that his government’s response to the massive disaster was not as quick as desired.
“Too many buildings were damaged, unfortunately. We were not able to speed up our interventions as quickly as we had desired,” he told reporters in the quake-affected Adiyaman province.
The emergency work was “very difficult” as the devastating effect of the earthquake spread over an area of 500 km, he said, adding that the harsh winter has been another obstacle.
“Most of the public workers, who would have conducted the first intervention and organizations, were themselves under the collapsed buildings,” the President added.
Erdogan had earlier admitted that the government had shortcomings in responding to disaster on the first day, but then had better managed the situation.
But now the country has gathered “perhaps the world’s largest search and rescue teams” with more than 141,000 staff, including foreign emergency teams, he said.
The President has promised to rebuild the quake-ravaged region within a year and to provide one-year rental assistance to earthquake victims who do not want to live in tents.
The quake victims have criticized Erdogan’s government, claiming that the emergency response was slow and that humanitarian aid was insufficient in the earthquake zone of ten provinces, home to nearly 13.5 million people.
On the President’s request, the Turkish parliament declared a state of emergency in ten earthquake-affected provinces for three months on Thursday.
Meanwhile, according to AFAD, over 81,000 people have been evacuated from earthquake-affected areas.
After an eight-year-old boy was rescued from the ruins of a building in Antakya, a district of Hatay province, 108 hours after the earthquake, rescuers, relatives, and local citizens burst into tears of joy.
After 102 hours, a family of six was extracted from the rubble in Iskenderun.
Raziye and Haci Murat Kilinc, the family’s neighbors, were rescued after 107 hours.
Many countries and global aid organizations have expressed their support for the two countries, and some have sent rescue teams and relief supplies to earthquake-ravaged areas.
The devastating 7.8 tremor struck Turkey’s southern province of Kahramanmaras at 4.17 a.m. on February 6, followed by a 6.4-magnitude tremor in Gaziantep province a few minutes later.
The 7.8-magnitude quake struck 23 kilometers east of Nurdagi in Gaziantep, at a depth of 24.1 kilometers.
A third 7.5-magnitude tremor struck Kahramanmaras around 1.30 p.m.
Source:OCN
