the disaster left more than 50,000 dead, according to a new report

Three weeks after the disaster, the human toll is still climbing. A total of 50,325 people perished in Turkey and Syria in the February 6 earthquakes. In Syria, the death toll is now 5,951 dead, according to a report compiled by AFP on Tuesday February 28 from cross-checks from several sources. The latest Turkish death toll, provided on Sunday by the Turkish Public Disaster Management Agency (Afad), is 44,374 dead.

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Several regions in northern and western Syria have been ravaged, fragmented by almost twelve years of civil war. In areas under the control of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, the Syrian Ministry of Health has recorded 1,414 deaths. In areas beyond Damascus, bordering Turkey, local authorities reported 4,537 dead.

“Almost definitive” assessment in Syria

A health official in these regions, Maram al-Sheikh, told AFP that this assessment was “almost definitive, the majority of the victims under the rubble having been found”. The assessment of the Syrian authorities is based on data collected from hospitals, medical centers, the Civil Defense, as well as local councils, which documented the burial of the victims without their having been transferred to the hospitals.

In Turkey, the World Bank estimates that the earthquake and its many aftershocks caused damage worth over $34 billion. This sum is the equivalent of 4% of the country’s GDP in 2021. This estimate does not take into account the costs of reconstruction, “potentially twice as high” according to the institution, nor the consequences on future Turkish growth.