Almost 300 hours after the earthquake, rescuers are still finding survivors in the rubble. But such reports are becoming increasingly rare. In Turkey, the rescue operations in most of the affected provinces are now being ended. In Syria, most of those affected have not received any help at all.
Almost two weeks after the devastating earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border area, the rescue operations in almost all affected provinces of Turkey have been stopped. The search for possible survivors is only continuing in a total of around 40 buildings in the provinces of Kahramanmaras and Hatay, said the head of Turkish civil protection, Yunus Sezer. Many foreign search and recovery teams have left.
Yesterday there were isolated reports of survivors being rescued from the rubble. After 296 hours, rescue workers rescued three people from collapsed buildings in Antakya, including a 12-year-old child who, according to the Turkish state news agency Anadolu, died after being rescued. The other two survivors, a married couple, were taken to the hospital.
The epicenter of the February 6 earthquake was in Kahramanmaras. The full extent of the catastrophe only gradually becomes clear. More than 105,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged in Turkey alone, and at least 44,000 people lost their lives in Syria and Turkey. The number of reported deaths remained almost unchanged on Sunday compared to the previous day. The Turkish civil protection agency Afad counted 40,689 dead, 47 more than the day before. It is estimated that more than 1.2 million people have left the affected region in Turkey. More than a million people are currently being temporarily housed in shelters, Sezer said.
Around 5,900 people have died in connection with the tremors in Syria so far. The number is updated less frequently. In Syria, the situation was devastating for many people even before the earthquake. Bombardments and fighting during years of civil war, a serious economic crisis and often hardly any public services have made the country a focus for humanitarian aid workers. According to the UN, more than 15 million people needed some form of assistance even before the earthquakes. And about two weeks after the tremors, not everyone in north-west Syria has received emergency aid.
“We’re just at the beginning and haven’t seen the worst yet,” said Muhannad Hadi, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator for Syria. So far, for example, around 60,000 people have been supplied with water and around 13,000 earthquake victims with tents. According to the UN, around 40,000 households are currently homeless. Since the disaster, more than 140 trucks carrying UN aid have traveled from Turkey to rebel-held north-western Syria. There, more than 9,000 buildings were completely or partially destroyed, leaving at least 11,000 people homeless. According to the UN, those affected most urgently needed accommodation such as tents.