GENEVA (Reuters) – The amount of damage caused by the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and neighboring Syria last month will exceed 100 billion dollars (about 93.77 billion euros) for Turkey alone, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) official said on Tuesday.
“It is clear from the calculations made to date that the amount of damage presented by the government and supported by … international partners would exceed $100 billion,” Louisa Vinton said via video link from Gaziantep during the a press briefing ahead of a major donors’ conference next week.
More than 52,000 people were killed in Turkey and Syria by the February 6 earthquakes, many crushed or buried in their sleep.
The provisional damage figure, which concerns only Turkey, will serve as the basis for a donors’ conference aimed at raising funds for the victims of the earthquake, which will be held in Brussels on March 16, Louisa Vinton added.
The World Bank had previously estimated the damage in Turkey at around $34.2 billion.
The scenes in Turkey’s worst-hit province of Hatay were described as “apocalyptic” by Louisa Vinton, as hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed.
“The needs are immense but the resources are scarce,” she added.
(Report by Emma Farge, French version Dina Kartit, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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