United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths on Monday said the Turkey and Syria earthquake rescue phase is nearing an end, with efforts now set to turn more towards recovery.
The two powerful earthquakes that struck border regions of the two countries last Monday have killed at least 35,000, with the UN expecting the number to rise to more than 50,000.
Griffiths, who made the comments during a visit to the devastated northern Syrian city of Aleppo, said the disaster response was reaching a turning point.
“The rescue phase is dragging live people out from the rubble and finding those who died in the rubble… that’s coming to a close,” he said. “Now the humanitarian phase, the urgency of providing shelter, psychosocial care, food, schooling, and a sense of the future for these people, that’s our obligation now.”
Griffiths drew particular attention to the plight of those in Aleppo, a major focal point in the Syrian civil war.
“What is the most striking here, is even in Aleppo, which has suffered so much these many years, this moment, that moment… was about the worst that these people have experienced,” he added.
Griffiths also said the UN would have aid moving from government-held regions in Syria to the rebel-held northwest of the country.
He said that, so far, the world had failed to provide enough aid to Syria, with people there “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said, adding, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
Here are other updates from Monday, February 13, on the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes:
Death toll tops 35,000
Figures put the latest death toll from the quakes at more than 35,000 on Monday, with search and rescue efforts starting to wind down.
Official and medical sources said that at least 31,643 people had died in Turkey and 3,581 in Syria, bringing the confirmed total to 35,224.
The first 7.8-magnitude quake struck near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border, followed by a 7.5-magnitude tremor.
The earthquakes reduced whole neighborhoods of cities in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria to rubble.
Rescue teams find more survivors
Rescuers have pulled more survivors from the rubble about a week after the quakes struck.
One crew plucked a six-year-old girl from the rubble of an apartment block in the southern Turkish city of Adiyaman some 178 hours after the first devastating quake that shook the region. Broadcaster CNN Turk said rescuers were also close to reaching the girl’s older sister.
Earlier, workers dragged a 40-year-old woman alive from a collapsed building on Monday, some 170 hours after the first of two quakes struck the region, reports said.
Teams separately freed a seven-year-old boy and a 62-year-old woman from debris in southeast Turkey’s Hatay province. Both had been trapped for 163 hours before their rescue late Sunday.
In Kahramanmaras, a rescue team successfully made contact with three survivors, believed to be a mother, daughter and baby, in the ruins of a building.
In many areas, the rescuers say they lacked sensors and advanced search equipment having to instead dig through the rubble with shovels or by hand.
Berlin urged to quickly ease visa rules
A representative of people of Turkish descent living in Germany has called for earthquake victims from Turkey to be allowed to enter Germany quickly.
“In this difficult situation, the authorities both in Germany and in Turkey should do everything they can to ensure that these people can travel,” the chairman of the Turkish community in Baden-Württemberg, Gökay Sofuoglu, told the RND news organization.
“The need is very great right now,” Sofuoglu stressed. People of Turkish descent in Germany are also willing to pay for expenses of their relatives from Turkey. What is important now is “faster processing of visa applications.”
The German government has already said it wants to temporarily ease visa restrictions for survivors of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The easing of rules would apply to those who have close family ties to Germany if they are facing homelessness or were injured.
More on the quakes in Turkey and Syria
As hope of recovering survivors fades, many grieving Turks are asking why more wasn’t done to prepare for the inevitable. DW spoke with survivors living along the Turkish-Syrian border.
In light of much-needed aid, President Bashar Assad is accelerating his ambitions to end Syria’s international isolation, have sanctions lifted and return to the international stage.