The toll of the disaster continues to grow. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria a week ago killed more than 35,000 people, according to the latest official reports on Monday, February 13. It amounted to 35,224 dead on Monday, including 31,643 in southern Turkey, according to the Turkish public disaster management body (Afad). Authorities have counted 3,581 dead in Syria. This balance could “double”, had alerted the UN on Saturday, when it was already 28,000 dead. “72,663 people could lose their lives while 193,399 people could be injured”, alerted the employers’ association Turkonfed in a report published Monday by the Turkish media. Follow our live.
Emergency meeting at the UN. The UN Security Council met urgently behind closed doors on Monday in New York to discuss the humanitarian situation in Syria. “We have failed the people of northwestern Syria”acknowledged on Twitter Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN. “They rightly feel abandoned” seeing that humanitarian aid is not arriving, and we have to “correct this failure as soon as possible”. The delivery of aid through the Bab al-Hawa crossing point, interrupted by the earthquake, has been able to resume, but calls to open other cross-border crossing points between Turkey and Syria are increasing.
A meeting between the WHO and Assad. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, met Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Sunday in Damascus, assuring that the latter had shown himself ready to consider the opening of new points. passing through to deliver aid to the rebel areas.
Unexpected rescues. In Turkey, cases of miraculous rescues, well beyond the crucial 72-hour period after the disaster, continue to be reported by relief workers and the media. A woman and a child were rescued alive from the rubble on Sunday in Sehit Aileleri by a team of Salvadorans, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced.