a race against time to save victims

A small hand appears, then the baby clings to its rescuer, who runs down the ruins of a building to an ambulance. The little girl, confused, was saved. While a violent earthquake shook south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday February 6 and killed more than 3,600 people according to a provisional report, France 2 followed the rescue operations, particularly in the Turkish city of Adana. With large numbers of people remaining trapped under the collapsed buildings which number in the thousands, the toll of the disaster continues to grow. The World Health Organization said it expected a much higher final toll: “We often see numbers eight times higher than the initial numbers”said an emergency manager for the WHO European office, Catherine Smallwood.

Tuesday, the first foreign relief teams must arrive on the spot. The European Union has activated its “civil protection mechanism” And “Teams from the Netherlands and Romania are already on the way” as well as in particular 139 French rescuers who must leave in the evening and 76 Polish firefighters. Azerbaijan, an ally and neighbor of Turkey, announced the immediate dispatch of 370 rescuers, Qatar and the Emirates as well as India that of rescue and medical teams and relief equipment. It is up to Ukraine at war which has proposed “a large group of rescuers”.