Graves have been dug, by the hundreds, in a row at the entrance to the Kapiçam cemetery. Families recite verses from the Koran, interspersed with the tears of a mother or a sister, in front of the mounds of earth under which lie the victims of Kahramanmaras and its region, a Turkish city at the epicenter of the earthquake which made at least 41,000 dead in Turkey. Wooden boards, marked with a pen with a number and a name, sometimes decorated with a ribbon or a scarf, make it possible to distinguish them from each other.
Kneeling before the graves of her mother and brother, Zehra Engizek arranges pieces of wood around the mounds. Their bodies were found three days after the February 6 earthquake. “We try to delineate the graves well so that no one damages them. Later, we will erect a tombstonesays the young woman of 20 years, dressed in a gray tracksuit, her hair hidden under a flowery veil. When I see all these graves lined up, I no longer feel anything. »
From the very first days, several towns located in the disaster area hastily set up collective cemeteries to cope with the influx of remains. Imams, body washers, prosecutors and forensic teams converged from across the country to lend a hand to local authorities in caring for and identifying the dead. The scale of the human disaster and the anger of the families at the slow pace of relief have made it a sensitive issue for the Turkish authorities. Many families are still looking for their dead. Bodies had to be buried in an emergency without being able to be identified.
Fast-paced funeral services
The bodies arrived by the hundreds the first days in the morgue improvised in the gymnasium of the stadium of Kahramanmaras. Funeral services followed each other at a frantic pace, leaving little time for families to honor their dead. From now on, only a dozen bodies are still brought in every day. “Here we have received 1,075 bodies, and 12,000 in total in the four centers of the city. We may find a hundred more in the rubble.”, indicated, Saturday, February 18, a prosecutor who came from Ankara with a team of forensic medicine. Research is only continuing in about forty buildings in the Kahramanmaras and Hatay regions. Families camp there in the hope of finding their missing loved ones. Some protest against the use of diggers which can damage the remains.
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