(Kahramanmaras) Rescue workers continued on Saturday to pull people alive from the rubble – including a seven-month-old baby – five days after the powerful quake that killed more than 28,000 people and left millions homeless in Turkey and Syria .
But a difficult security situation has led the Austrian army to announce the suspension of its rescue operations in the affected Turkish areas.
“There have been attacks between groups,” a spokesman in Vienna told AFP, without further details.
A similar decision was taken in Germany by the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), as well as the NGO ISAR Germany, which specializes in assisting victims of natural disasters, according to a spokesperson for the NGO. .
Two Austrian dog handlers, however, resumed the search in the afternoon “under the protection of the Turkish army”.
PHOTO BERNAT ARMANGUE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Families wait near the rubble of buildings in the hope of hearing from their loved ones, in Antakya, Turkey.
According to a tweet from the Turkish Embassy in Vienna, “the Austrian team currently has no security problems”.
” My heart is broken ”
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has meanwhile arrived in the Syrian city of Aleppo, hard hit by the earthquake.
“I am heartbroken seeing the conditions survivors face – freezing weather and extremely limited access to shelter, food, water, heat and medical care,” he said. tweeted
According to the latest official reports, the earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 killed at least 28,191 people: 24,617 in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria.
The WHO estimates that 26 million people in the two countries may have been affected, including around five million vulnerable people, and on Saturday launched an urgent appeal to raise $42.8 million.
Humanitarian organizations are particularly worried about the spread of cholera, which has reappeared in Syria.
The Syrian government on Friday authorized “the delivery of humanitarian aid to the whole” of the country – including rebel-held areas – where 5.3 million people are at risk of becoming homeless.
A crossing point was also opened between Turkey and Armenia, for the first time in 35 years, to allow the arrival of humanitarian aid.
“Is the world there? »
In Turkey, despite the freezing cold, a seven-month-old baby boy, Hamza, was pulled alive from the rubble, 140 hours after the earthquake in the province of Hatay (south), the IHA news agency reported on Saturday evening. A two-year-old girl, Asya, was also rescued in the same province, according to Turkish media.
Rescuers also pulled a 70-year-old woman, Mnekse Tabak, in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province alive from the rubble, amid applause” and cries of “Allah is great”, according to a video broadcast by public broadcaster TRT Haber. “Is the world there? she asked as she came back to daylight.
Anadolu news agency reported on the rescue of 35-year-old mother Ozlem Yilmaz and her six-year-old daughter Hatice from a collapsed building in Adiyaman province. An American doctor gave them first aid before they were taken to a hospital.
In the south of the country, it was necessary to resort to improvised morgues on parking lots, in stadiums or gymnasiums, where anguished families search for their dead.
According to the Turkish agency in charge of natural disasters, nearly 32,000 people are mobilized for search and rescue operations, as well as more than 8,000 foreign rescue workers. More than 25,000 Turkish military personnel are also in the affected areas, according to Defense Minister Hulusi Akar.
PHOTO OMAR HAJ KADOUR, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
This aerial view shows Syrian White Helmets relief workers distributing aid at a makeshift camp where tents have been erected by volunteers to temporarily shelter people left homeless after the earthquake struck the area , near the Syrian village of Killi, in the province of Idlib.
Arrests
In addition, the Turkish media announced the arrest of a dozen entrepreneurs, mainly in the region of Sanliurfa, one of the most affected.
The brutal collapse of the buildings, which betrays their poor construction and left their residents with virtually no chance, is angering the country.
PHOTO GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE, REUTERS
A man sits among the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras province.
Forty-eight people were also arrested for looting in the affected provinces, the official Anadolu news agency reported on Saturday. They were in possession of large sums of money, mobile phones, computers, weapons, as well as jewelry and bank cards.
Looters have notably appeared in Antakya, in the south of the country. “We watch our homes, our cars,” Aylin Kabasakal told AFP. Looters also loot houses. I don’t know what to say, we are destroyed, in a state of shock, it’s a nightmare”.
If humanitarian aid from abroad flows into Turkey, access to Syria at war, whose regime is under international sanctions, is more complicated.
“The Council of Ministers has accepted the delivery of humanitarian aid to the whole” of Syrian territory, “including areas outside the control of the State”, announced the Syrian government.
Damascus specified that the distribution of the aid should be “supervised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent”, with the support of the UN.
Until then, almost all the aid provided to the rebel areas transited in dribs and drabs, from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing point, the only one currently guaranteed by the United Nations.