While international aid is being organized, relief continues to advance in the rubble and the hope of finding the missing alive is dwindling.
SourceAFP
© KYRIAKOS FINAS / SOOC / SOOC via AFP
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SAccording to the latest official reports, the earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, followed by more than a hundred tremors, killed at least 21,051 people, including 17,674 in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria. A balance sheet which is still likely to evolve in the coming hours, as the relief manages to advance in the rubble. The hope of finding more survivors is dwindling on Friday in both countries, the fifth day after the disaster.
International aid is beginning to flow into Syria from Turkey, but NGOs are demanding more for relief. A first convoy of six trucks (carrying blankets, mattresses and relief materials) was able to enter the rebel areas of northwestern Syria on Thursday from the Bab al-Hawa border post. The organization of the White Helmets, rescue workers who operate in Syrian rebel areas, however expressed its “disappointment”, considering that this aid was “routine” and not specific to the search for survivors under the rubble.
While Turkey is working to open two other access points, the UN said on Tuesday that the flow through this border crossing was disrupted due to damaged roads, even if the platform for transshipping goods and the crossing point itself were intact.
“Delivered to Ourselves”
On both sides of the border, thousands of homes were destroyed. Rescuers are stepping up their efforts to search for survivors, even though the crucial first 72-hour window to find survivors has closed, with the situation further aggravated by freezing cold.
After several days of helpless waiting, the 130 rescuers dispatched by Qatar were able to rescue Thursday in Nurdagi, a rural town of 40,000 inhabitants located near the epicenter of the earthquake, a 12-year-old boy, alive.
Hundreds of rescue workers from Malaysia, Spain, Kazakhstan, India and elsewhere are also hard at work there.
The inhabitants, forced to live in tents or in their cars, attend in tears the comings and goings of the rescuers who try to locate possible survivors using drones and thermal detection cameras.
READ ALSOEarthquakes in Turkey and Syria: how satellites can help reliefIn Antakya, a city further south destroyed by the earthquake, around thirty miners traveled a thousand kilometers to come and lend a hand.
Equipped with pickaxes, shovels, sledgehammers, hacksaws and crowbars, they try to help people trapped under a mass of concrete and scrap metal. A backhoe is helping clear the ground, when a team leader at this Zonguldak mine, near the Black Sea, signals it to stop. He smashes a block of concrete, from which his companions evacuate the shards. The team leader asks for a blanket. A child has just been discovered dead in his bed. His father leaves with the body wrapped in his arms, without a word.
Nesibe Kulubecioglu, who was able to get out of her bed alive with her daughter, lost six relatives in the earthquake, and no longer has any hope of finding them alive. If she is full of gratitude towards the minors, she is angry with the government and denounces the slowness of relief, just like Hakan Tanriverdi, a resident of Adiyaman, a city in southern Turkey. “We are deeply hurt that no one has supported us”, plague Tanriverdi.
“I didn’t see anyone before 2 p.m. on the second day of the earthquake,” 34 hours after the first tremor, thunders Mehmet Yildirim. “No state, no police, no soldiers. Shame on you ! You left us on our own. »