The toll of the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday has crossed the threshold of 16,000 dead, according to official reports released Thursday, February 9, while searches continue to try to find survivors in the freezing cold. 12,873 people died in Turkey and 3,162 in Syria, according to authorities and medical sources, bringing the total number of victims to 16,035. Follow our live.
The search continues in the cold. The first 72 hours are crucial for finding survivors, said Ilan Kelman, a disaster researcher at University College London. In Gaziantep, a Turkish city near the border with Syria, the survivors of the earthquake face freezing temperatures, at -5°C. Gyms, mosques, schools and shops took in survivors for the night.
Twitter restored in Turkey. Access to the social network was restored on Thursday after being blocked for a dozen hours on Turkey’s main mobile phone providers. The return to service came shortly after a tweet from social media boss Elon Musk that “Twitter has been informed by the Turkish government that access will be reactivated shortly”.
Erdogan criticized. Visiting the region, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sketched a mea culpa on Wednesday in the face of mounting criticism. “Of course there are shortcomings, it is impossible to be prepared for such a disaster”, he estimated. Since Monday’s earthquake, Turkish police have arrested a dozen people for social media posts criticizing the government’s handling of the disaster.
In Antakya, hundreds of bodies deposited in a parking lot. In the parking lot of the main hospital in Antakya, a large city in the province of Hatay, Turkey, AFP counted nearly 200 bodies lined up on Wednesday evening, sometimes wrapped in simple blankets, arranged on either side of the tents where caregivers come from all over the country and sometimes from abroad.