Earthquake in Syria and Turkey killed more than 33 000 people, Turkey blames builders
2023.02.13 01:30
Earthquake in Syria and Turkey killed more than 33 000 people, Turkey blames builders
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – On Sunday, nearly a week after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkey and Syria, rescue workers pulled more survivors from the rubble as Turkish authorities attempted to maintain order throughout the disaster zone and initiated legal action regarding building collapses.
The death toll from Monday’s earthquake and major aftershocks in both countries surpassed 33,000 and appeared to be set to continue rising as the odds of finding additional survivors increased. It was Turkey’s deadliest earthquake since 1939.
On Sunday, business owners emptied their stores in a central district of Antakya, one of the worst-hit cities in southern Turkey, to stop looters from stealing merchandise.
From other cities, residents and aid workers reported worsening security, with numerous reports of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.
President Tayyip Erdogan has stated that the government will firmly deal with looters in the face of questions regarding his response to the earthquake as he prepares for a national election that is anticipated to be the most difficult of his two decades in power.
The disaster in Syria struck the rebel-held northwest hardest, displacing numerous individuals who had previously been displaced multiple times by a decade-long civil war. In comparison to government-held areas, the region has received little assistance.
From the Turkey-Syria border, where only one crossing is open for U.N. aid supplies, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted, “We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria.”
Griffiths said, “They rightly feel abandoned,” adding that he was focused on addressing that quickly.
Washington urged the Syrian government and all other parties in the country to grant humanitarian access to everyone who needed it right away.
Emergency responders still found a few people clinging to life in the demolished homes of thousands of people, more than six days after the first earthquake.
After spending 156 hours in Antakya’s rubble, Syrian Malik Milandi, 54, was rescued by a Chinese rescue team and Turkish firefighters.
The few buildings that were still standing on the main road into the city had large cracks or facades that had caved in. As rescuers pleaded for silence, traffic occasionally slowed down to look for signs of life below the rubble.
Sunday saw the rescue of a father and daughter, a toddler, and a 10-year-old girl from the rubble of collapsed buildings. However, such scenes were becoming increasingly uncommon as the number of dead continued to rise.
As bodies were unloaded from lorries at a funeral near Reyhanli, veiled women wept and beat their chests. Some of the bodies were in closed wood coffins, others were in uncovered coffins, and still others were just wrapped in blankets.
Some locals tried to salvage what they could from the devastation.
Mustafa Bahcivan, the owner of a mobile shop who is 32 years old and lives in Elbistan, said he has been coming into town almost every day since Monday’s initial 7.8 magnitude quake. He searched through the rubble on Sunday to find any of his phones that might still be working and be able to be sold.
One of the busiest streets in the past was this one. He stated, “Now it’s completely gone.”
In the wake of the quake, building quality in a nation that is located on multiple seismic fault lines has come into sharp focus.
According to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay, 131 people have been identified as being responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of flattened buildings that were found in the ten provinces that were affected.
He stated, “We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, particularly for buildings that suffered significant damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries.”
Erdogan is facing parliamentary and presidential elections in June when the earthquake struck. Due to skyrocketing inflation and a falling value of the Turkish lira, his popularity had been declining prior to the catastrophe.
Critics have questioned why the army, which played a crucial role in the aftermath of the 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner, and some affected by the quake as well as opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on.
Erdogan acknowledged issues, including the difficulty of delivering aid despite damaged transportation links, but claimed that the situation was under control.
During the country’s 12 years of civil war, hostilities are now preventing relief efforts in Syria.
A spokesperson for the United Nations stated that approval issues with the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which controls much of the region, have prevented earthquake aid from reaching territory controlled by hardline opposition groups from government-held regions.
Reuters was informed by a HTS source in Idlib that the organization would not permit shipments from government-held regions and that aid would be arriving from Turkey in the north.
A spokesperson for the United Nations, Jens Laerke, stated that the organization is hoping to expand cross-border operations by opening two additional border points for the delivery of aid between Turkey and opposition-held Syria.
The first high-level Arab official visit since the earthquake took place on Sunday, when the foreign minister of an ally of the United States, the United Arab Emirates, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, a number of Arab nations have supported Assad. Despite their efforts to isolate Assad following his crackdown on protests in 2011 and the outbreak of civil war, Western nations have contributed significantly to U.N. relief efforts throughout Syria but have provided little direct assistance to Damascus during the conflict.
On Sunday, Damascus also received the first shipment of European earthquake aid to government-held areas of Syria.
Geir Pedersen, the United Nations’ Syria envoy, stated in Damascus that the United Nations was collecting funds to support Syria. We are attempting to inform everyone: Put politics aside; this is the time to unite in support of the Syrian people in a common effort,” he said.
The quake killed more people than the 31,000 killed in a 2003 quake in Iran, making it the sixth deadliest natural disaster of this century.
It has resulted in the deaths of 29,605 people in Turkey and over 3,500 people in Syria, where the death toll has not been updated in two days.
Turkey stated that approximately 80,000 individuals were in hospitals and over a million were in temporary shelters.
