Hopes of finding more survivors dwindled on Friday in Turkey and Syria, a hundred hours after the violent earthquake that killed more than 21,700 people in one of the worst disasters in the region for a century.
Humanitarian aid is flowing into Turkey – Germany notably announced on Friday the sending of 90 tons of material by plane – but access to Syria at war, whose regime is under international sanctions, is much more complicated.
Almost all the humanitarian aid destined for the rebel areas is sent from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, the only one currently guaranteed by the UN. Turkish diplomacy says it is working to open two other crossing points “with the regions under government control” of Damascus, “for humanitarian reasons”.
The UN had indicated on Tuesday that the transport through this border post was disrupted due to damaged roads.
For his part, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced Thursday that he was “on his way to Syria”. The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, arrived the same day in Aleppo, Syria.
“Delivered to Ourselves”
On both sides of the border, thousands of homes are destroyed and rescuers are stepping up their efforts to search for survivors, even if the crucial window of the first 72 hours to find survivors has closed.
The situation, aggravated by freezing cold, is such that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in armed struggle against the Turkish army since 1984, decided on Friday “not to carry out any operation as long as the Turkish State does not not attack”, according to Cemil Bayik, an official quoted by the Firat agency, close to the PKK. “Thousands of our people are still under the rubble. […] Everyone must mobilize all their means”.
The 130 rescuers dispatched by Qatar were able on Thursday to rescue a 12-year-old boy living in Nurdagi, a rural Turkish town of 40,000 inhabitants located near the epicenter of the earthquake.
Hundreds of rescuers from Malaysia, Spain, Kazakhstan, India and elsewhere are also hard at work.
The inhabitants, forced to live in tents or in their cars, observe in tears the comings and goings of the rescuers looking for possible survivors with drones and thermal cameras.
PHOTO UMIT BEKTAS, REUTERS
Survivors warm up at a camp in Hatay, Turkey.
In Antakya, a city further south destroyed by the earthquake, about thirty miners traveled a thousand kilometers to lend a hand, equipped with pickaxes, shovels, sledgehammers, hacksaws and crowbars.
A backhoe is helping clear the ground when a foreman at this mine in Zonguldak, near the Black Sea, signals 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.
Many survivors criticize the slow government reaction, such as Hakan Tanriverdi, a resident of Adiyaman (southern Turkey). “We are deeply hurt that no one has supported us,” he complains.
“I didn’t see anyone before 2 p.m. on the second day of the earthquake,” 34 hours after the first tremor, added Mehmet Yildirim. “No state, no police, no soldiers. Shame on you ! You left us on our own”.
In Cyprus, the first bodies of Turkish-Cypriot victims excavated from the rubble after the earthquake in Turkey were repatriated to the island on Friday, including those of seven teenage volleyball players who were taking part in a tournament, local television announced.
The hotel in which the group (24 young people aged 11 to 14, four of their teachers, a coach and 10 parents) were staying in Adiyaman, in southern Turkey, has completely collapsed. According to the Turkish channel NTV, “The bodies of 19 young people (from the group) were discovered under the rubble”.
Cholera risk
According to the latest official reports, the earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, followed by more than a hundred tremors, killed at least 21,719 people, including 18,342 in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria.
The WHO estimates that 23 million people are “potentially exposed, including around five million vulnerable people”, and fears a major health crisis that would cause even more damage than the earthquake.
PHOTO UMIT BEKTAS, REUTERS
Smoldering rubbish litters a street in Hatay, Turkey.
Humanitarian organizations are particularly worried about the spread of cholera, which has reappeared in Syria.
The EU sent first aid to Turkey hours after the quake on Monday. But it initially offered only minimal aid to Syria through existing humanitarian programs, due to international sanctions in place since the civil war began in 2011.
On Wednesday, Damascus officially requested EU assistance. The European Commission has asked Member States to respond favourably.
The World Bank announced Thursday that it will provide $1.78 billion in aid to Turkey and Washington an envelope of $85 million to Turkey and Syria. The US Treasury Department also announced the temporary lifting of certain sanctions imposed on Syria, with the aim of seeing aid reach the affected populations as quickly as possible.
France will release emergency aid to the Syrian population to the tune of 12 million euros. For its part, London announced Thursday additional financial aid of at least 3.4 million euros, for a total amount of nearly 4.3 million euros allocated to the White Helmets, an organization operating in rebel areas.