In recent days, a few miracles have appeared amid the drama, such as this video shared by Turkey’s Anadolu agency on Twitter, of a 13-year-old girl being pulled from the rubble in Gaziantep, Turkey, well after the 72-hour period under review as crucial. But they must not hide the reality: the toll continues to worsen to 28 dead and could double, warns the UN.
In the province of Hatay (south), a seven-month-old boy, Hamza, was also found alive, curled up under a slab where he spent more than 140 hours, reports the IHA press agency. A two-year-old girl, Asya, was rescued in the same area.
Operating in freezing cold, rescuers also pulled a 70-year-old woman from the rubble in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, amid cheers and screams, according to video broadcast by public broadcaster TRT Haber. “Is the world there? she asks, coming back to the light.
Turkish news agency Anadolu also mentions the rescue of a 35-year-old mother and her six-year-old daughter from a destroyed building in Adiyaman province.
According to the latest official reports, the earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 killed at least 28,191 people: 24,617 in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria.
The balance sheet “will double or more”
Visiting Kahramanmaras in Turkey, the head of the UN humanitarian agency Martin Griffiths tells Sky News that the death toll will “double or more”. “We haven’t really started counting the number of dead yet,” says Griffiths.
“Soon the people in charge of search and rescue will give way to the humanitarian agencies whose job it is to take care of the extraordinary number of people affected over the next few months,” Griffiths said in a video posted on his twitter account.
Burhan Cagdas’ restaurant distributed some 4,000 free meals to survivors. “Our staff find themselves in an impossible situation,” he explains. They have victims within their own families and their homes have been destroyed.” The family of Burhan Cagdas himself has been sleeping in cars since Monday. But the wave of solidarity is only stronger. “We want to help,” he sums up.
Nearly 32,000 people are mobilized for search and rescue operations in Turkey, as well as more than 8,000 foreign rescuers according to the Turkish agency responsible for natural disasters.
A crossing point was also opened between Turkey and Armenia, for the first time in 35 years, to allow the arrival of humanitarian aid.
Arrest of contractors
On Saturday, the Austrian army suspended its rescue operations for a few hours, citing “the security situation” on the spot. A similar decision was taken by the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), as well as by a German NGO specializing in assistance to victims of natural disasters.
In the afternoon, two Austrian dog handlers were able to resume the search “under the protection of the Turkish army”, according to an army spokesman in Vienna.
The brutal collapse of the buildings, which betrays their poor construction and left their residents with virtually no chance, is angering the country. Turkish media reported the arrest of a dozen building contractors in the south of the country. Further arrests are expected.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 26 million people may have been affected in Turkey and Syria, including “around five million vulnerable people”, and launched an urgent appeal on Saturday to collect 42.8 million dollars.
But if international aid is flowing into Turkey, access to Syria at war, whose regime is under international sanctions, is proving more complicated.
Aid allowed in rebel areas
Visiting quake-hit Aleppo, northwest Syria, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “heartbroken seeing the conditions survivors are facing – freezing weather and extremely limited access to shelter, food, water, heating and medical care”. Humanitarian organizations are particularly worried about the spread of cholera, which has reappeared in Syria.
The Syrian government on Friday authorized “the delivery of humanitarian aid to the whole” of the country – including areas held by the rebels – where 5.3 million people are at risk of becoming homeless.
Damascus specifies that the distribution of aid should be “supervised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent”, with the support of the UN.
Until then, almost all the aid provided to the rebel areas transited in dribs and drabs, from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing point, the only one currently guaranteed by the United Nations.