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Death toll rises to over 16,000 in Turkey, Syria quake
Officials and medics said 12,873 people had died in Turkey and 3,162 in Syria from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 16,035.
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A woman sits amid rubble and damages on February 7, 2023 following an earthquake in Gaziantep, Turkey. Rescuers in Turkey and Syria are braving frigid weather, aftershocks and collapsing buildings as they dig for survivors buried by an earthquake that killed
more than 5,000 people. (Reuters/Suhaib Salem)
T
he death toll from a huge earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria climbed to more than 16,000 on Thursday, as rescuers raced to reach survivors stuck under rubble in freezing weather.
Officials and medics said 12,873 people had died in Turkey and 3,162 in Syria from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 16,035.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who contests an election in May, said on a visit to the disaster zone on Wednesday that operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless.
Across a swathe of southern Turkey, people sought temporary shelter and food in freezing winter weather, and waited in anguish by piles of rubble where family and friends might still lie buried.
The confirmed death toll in Turkey rose to 12,391 by Thursday morning, the Disaster Management Authority said, up more than 30% on Wednesday's toll.
Rescuers were still finding some people alive. But many Turks have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped - sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.
"Where is the state? Where have they been for two days? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can get them out," Sabiha Alinak said on Wednesday near a snow-covered collapsed building in the city of Malatya where her young relatives were trapped.
There were similar scenes and complaints in neighbouring Syria, whose north was hard hit by Monday's huge quake and where the death toll had climbed to at least 2,950 by Wednesday, according to the government and a rescue service operating in the rebel-held northwest.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations admitted the government had a "lack of capabilities and lack of equipment," blaming more than a decade of civil war in his country and Western sanctions.
The death toll from both countries was expected to rise as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who had been asleep when the quake hit.
In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital.
Melek, 64, bemoaned the lack of rescue teams. "We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold."
Many in the disaster zone had slept in their cars or in the streets under blankets in freezing cold, fearful of going back into buildings shaken by the 7.8 magnitude tremor -Turkey's deadliest since 1999 - and by a second powerful quake hours later.
