Turkey said it would demolish buildings heavily damaged by a major earthquake last week and rapidly launch a massive reconstruction effort, with thousands of families struggling to survive amid the rubble and freezing conditions.
Rescuers who flew in to rescue people trapped in the rubble were starting to pack, although a woman was pulled out of a collapsed building on Wednesday after being buried for 222 hours.
In neighboring Syria’s opposition-held northwest, already battered by more than a decade of bombardment, the quake left many to fend for themselves amid the rubble, with aid being slowed by the complex politics of humanitarian aid there.
The combined death toll in the two countries has passed 41,000, and millions more are in need of humanitarian aid, with many survivors left homeless in near-freezing temperatures. Defenses are now few and far between.
Half of the buildings in Turkey’s southern Hatay province have either collapsed, are heavily damaged or need to be demolished quickly, the government said.
Turkey’s Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum tweeted, “We will demolish quickly and build safe houses.”
Tourism Minister Nuri Ersoy told a news conference in Malatya, about 160 km from the epicenter, that the government encouraged people to return home if and when authorities deemed their building safe, “to get back to normal”. “.
‘Get us out!’
Across the border, in Syria, relief efforts have been hampered by a civil war that has torn apart the country and divided regional and global powers.
Although a single border from Turkey to Syria was open after the earthquake, the United Nations did not send aid for several days, citing logistical issues.
“The situation is really sad,” said Abdulrahman Mohammed, a displaced Syrian originally from the neighboring province of Aleppo, in Idlib in the country’s northwest, where many have taken refuge over the past decade from other war-torn provinces.
Parts of the provinces of Idlib and nearby Aleppo, held by Turkish-backed rebels, accounted for the bulk of the earthquake’s casualties in Syria: more than 4,400 of the 5,800 killed, according to the United Nations and government officials.
“Anyone who is working as a laborer and renting a house … if you need $10 a day in expenses and you find it difficult,” said Mohammed, originally from Aleppo. can get from – so how can you rebuild?”
On Tuesday, eight days after the earthquake, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad opened a second border crossing for aid deliveries after giving his consent, marking a shift for Damascus, which has long handled cross-border aid deliveries to the rebel enclave. have opposed.
But the trucks did not contain any of the heavy equipment and machinery that rescuers say they need to move the wreckage faster – and that could have helped rebuild.
“What happened to us – it’s the first time around the world. There was an earthquake and the international community and the United Nations didn’t help,” said Raed Saleh, a White Helmets rescue worker working in opposition-held areas. He is the head of the force.
Saleh and others in the northwest said that if the outside world had acted faster, more lives could have been saved in Syria.
In Idlib, Walid Ibrahim lost more than two dozen members of his family – among them his brothers, his cousins and all of his children.
“We were removing rock after rock and found nothing underneath. People were shouting from under the concrete, ‘Get us out! Get us out!’ But we will come empty-handed,” he said. “Your hands alone are not enough.”
Further north, in Jandaris, rescuers said they had not found anyone alive under the rubble since February 9, but the search was ongoing. Residents said that people are still trapped.
Hassan Mohammed, a civil protection volunteer, said efforts to find survivors in the worst-hit areas in northwestern Syria had ended, with rescue workers still deployed in response to reports of people missing. “We are also going to areas where there is no internet,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Khalil Ashavi, Maya Gebelli, Daren Butler, Ezgi Erkoyan, Timur Azhari, Firas Makdesi, Ese Tobakse, Huseyn Hayatsevar, Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Christina Fincher)
read all Breaking News Here
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)