Rémy Trieau (in Antakya) with AFP
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07:06, February 07, 2023
According to the latest official report – which is likely to increase – more than 4,300 people died after the three earthquakes that hit Turkey and northern Syria. This Tuesday morning, the emergency services are active to extirpate the survivors and await the first teams of rescuers from France and Qatar.
The race against time and cold continued all night in Turkey and northern Syria to extricate survivors of the violent earthquakes that ravaged the region on Monday, killing several thousand people. According to the latest official report – which is likely to get heavier – nearly 20 hours after the first of three tremors, with a magnitude of 7.8 felt as far away as Lebanon, Cyprus and northern Iraq, more 4,300 people were killed, including 2,921 in Turkey according to the public disaster management body (Afad), and more than 1,440 in Syria.
A devastated city
In Antakya, in the south of Turkey, rescuers fought hard in the cold, in the pouring rain or snow, sometimes with their bare hands, to save every life that could be like this woman, still under the rubble but alive . In her arms, her dead baby. Facing this completely crushed building, with the floors collapsed on top of each other, the head of a man emerges from the ruins. It’s completely stuck in concrete.
International aid is due to arrive on Tuesday
A little further on, a hospital is in ruins. Another building is completely collapsed. Kenyan managed to get by, but not his friends. “They have been stuck for 25 hours. I myself got out of there with difficulty. Rubble fell on me. There were five of us. They are still under there. We hear them, but we don’t know if they have to eat or even water”, he testifies at the microphone of Europe 1.
All are waiting for reinforcements this Tuesday morning to continue the search in this devastated city. International aid to Turkey should start arriving on Tuesday with the first teams of rescuers, from France and Qatar in particular. US President Joe Biden has promised his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan “all the help needed, whatever it is”.