More than 100 hours since Monday’s quakes, extraordinary scenes of rescues gripped attention across Turkey and Syria, including some of very young children who survived days under leveled buildings.
In Turkey, the earthquake disaster is the most powerful to hit the country since 1939, and has surpassed the death toll of 17,000 from an earthquake in 1999.
Here’s the latest on the aftermath of the earthquakes.
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Key developments
- The death toll in Turkey and Syria has exceeded 24,000. At least 20,665 people were killed and more than 80,000 injured, Turkey said. In northwest Syria, 2,166 people died and 2,950 were injured. In the government-controlled Syria, state media reported 1,347 deaths and 2,295 injured.
- The Syrian Civil Defense group said some search-and-rescue efforts had already ended in parts of the northwest. The head of the civil defense group also known as the White Helmets criticized the international community for not providing enough aid or equipment. “We were fighting helplessness and time to reach people alive,” Raed al-Saleh said Friday.
- Armenia sent trucks with humanitarian aid to the disaster zone in Turkey, the Armenian foreign ministry said Saturday. Armenia’s ambassador in the Netherlands said it was the first time since 1993 that trucks crossed the Armenian-Turkish border to deliver the aid. The two countries have long had adversarial relations — they do not have diplomatic ties, and their border has been closed for decades.
- The U.S. military began deploying forces to help with earthquake relief in Turkey, officials said, with a Navy headquarters overseeing the mission and a Marine Corps general on the ground to assess the scope of support needed.
- The Syrian government said it had approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to areas outside its control, adding that the Red Cross and U.N. agencies would help ensure their distribution. Damascus has during the war restricted access to the rebel-held northwest, where aid deliveries depend on votes by the U.N. Security Council and one main border crossing into the region open via Turkey.
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Aid efforts
- Fourteen aid trucks entered northwest Syria through Turkey on Friday, as U.N. officials said damage to roads had hampered cross-border operations into the region, where millions of Syrians are displaced by war. Among the items were tents, blankets and heaters, the U.N. humanitarian affairs agency said.
- The head of the World Health Organization is heading to Syria to support health-care efforts, he said in a tweet. The WHO’s third plane carrying emergency supplies is expected to reach Syria on Sunday. In a statement, it said illnesses such as pneumonia are likely to rise in the next few days, as people remain exposed to the cold in temporary shelters.
- Turkey will pay rents for a year if citizens do not wish to stay in relief tents, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday. He pledged to rebuild the quake-hit southern region as part of a one-year plan. Separately, Turkish authorities detained Mehmet Yasar Coskun, the developer of a collapsed residential complex, on Friday, according to the Anadolu news agency.
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Rescue operations
- Sixty-seven survivors were rescued from under rubble in the past 24 hours in devastated regions of southern Turkey, Vice President Fuat Oktay said Friday. After the rescue operations, the focus is expected to shift to rebuilding, as the quake has left tens of thousands homeless during a harsh winter.
- A teenager in Gaziantep was pulled from wreckage after a 94-hour rescue effort, Turkish state media reported. Adnan, a 17-year-old, drank his own urine to survive under the rubble for nearly four days. Crowds cheered as 17-year-old Adnan was lifted out by rescue workers, in a video shared by TRT World. Rescuers said they would look for his dog, who remained trapped.
- A misfired text message may have saved a Turkish man’s life, after he was stuck under the rubble of a seven-story building in Kahramanmaras, Turkish media reported. Mustafa Sahin said he had sent a message with the number 8 to a cousin by mistake, which helped rescue teams find his location.4
In earthquake-battered Syria, a desperate wait for help that never came: “It took four days and nights after the earthquake for the rubble to fall silent here,” Louisa Loveluck reports from Jinderis in northwest Syria.
“The strongest voices belonged to the women, residents said. Parted from their children, or fighting to save them, they screamed until their lungs gave out.”