The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday described the earthquake that devastated southeastern Turkey and northern Syria as “the worst natural disaster in a century” to affect a country in its European zone, with a death toll that now exceeds 35,000.
“We are witnessing the worst natural disaster in the WHO Europe region in a century and we are still measuring its magnitude,” said the director of its European branch, Hans Kluge.
“Its true cost is not yet known and recovering from it and healing from it will take time and tremendous effort,” he said in an internet press conference.
The death toll on Tuesday at midday reached 35,662 dead (31,974 dead in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria, according to local sources) and it “will probably increase further”, according to the UN official.
Some 26 million people “require humanitarian assistance” in Turkey and Syria, he said.
The emergency medical deployment, with three planes and medical supplies for 400,000 people, is the largest in WHO Europe’s 75-year history.
The European branch of the organization includes 53 countries including Turkey. Syria is part of the WHO Eastern Mediterranean area.
Facing the challenge of helping the homeless
A first aid convoy entered the rebel areas of northern Syria on Tuesday eight days after the earthquake.
The United Nations (UN) on Tuesday launched an appeal for donations of nearly 400 million dollars to help victims in Syria for three months, and should soon do the same for Turkey.
With the chances of finding survivors dwindling, the priority now is to help the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people whose homes were destroyed by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the February 6.
“We are witnessing the worst natural disaster in the WHO Europe region in a century and we are still measuring its magnitude,” noted a WHO official at a conference in press.
On the Syrian side, for the first time since 2020, an aid convoy entered the rebel areas in the north of the country on Tuesday through the Bab al-Salama border crossing with Turkey, an AFP journalist reported.
The convoy is made up of 11 humanitarian aid trucks from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a spokesman for this UN organization told AFP in Geneva.
Syria had previously announced the opening, for an initial period of three months, of two new crossing points with Turkey to speed up the arrival of humanitarian aid.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomed this decision by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad which “will allow more aid to come in, faster”.
A UN delegation arrived on the spot on Tuesday to assess the needs of these hard-hit regions, noted an AFP correspondent.
The delegation had entered through the border post of Bab al-Hawa (north) with Turkey. The delegation then went to a World Food Program (WFP) center in Sarmada, before meeting with local officials, according to the AFP correspondent.
According to the Syrian Ministry of Transport, 62 planes loaded with aid have so far landed in Syria, including one from Saudi Arabia, the first in ten years, with more expected in the hours and days to come, in particularly from the kingdom.
In Turkey, according to the government, some 1.2 million people have been housed in student hostels, more than 206,000 tents have been erected in ten provinces and 400,000 victims have been evacuated from devastated areas.
In Antakya, the Antioch of Antiquity, toilets have been installed, to the great relief of the survivors who were deprived of them for several days, and the telephone network has been restored in part of the city.
A strong police and military presence was visible to prevent looting, after several incidents over the weekend, when many residents were in a state of absolute necessity.
Added to extreme material deprivation is psychological distress, which hits the youngest hardest. More than 7 million children – 4.6 in Turkey and 2.5 in Syria – live in the affected regions, according to UNICEF, which fears that several thousand of them are among the killed.
Turkish Family Minister Derya Yanik said on Monday evening that 1,362 unaccompanied children have been registered in the affected provinces, 369 of whom have been released to their families.
” Traumatized “
“My children have been seriously affected by the earthquake,” Serkan Tatoglu, whose wife and four children aged 6 to 15 have found refuge in a village of tents erected next to the city stadium, told AFP. Kahramanmaras.
“I lost about ten members of my family. My children are still not aware but the youngest is traumatized by the aftershocks. She keeps asking “Dad, are we going to die?” “, he confides. “With my wife, we hug them and tell them ‘everything will be fine'”.
Hopes of finding new survivors are now slim.
An 18-year-old man was extracted alive on Monday after a week under rubble in Adiyaman province, as well as neighboring Kahramanmaras province where twins were pulled out by rescuers who dug a 5-meter tunnel to reach them.
In Kahramanmaras, an AFP journalist saw rescuers find a dog alive on Monday under the rubble.
But the toll of the earthquake is inexorably increasing and could even double, warned the UN on Sunday: it rose to 35,662 dead on Tuesday at midday – 31,974 dead in southern Turkey, according to Afad, Turkish public disaster management body, while the authorities counted 3,688 dead in Syria.
“72,663 people may have lost their lives and 193,399 people may be injured,” according to a report by the employers’ association Turkonfed published by Turkish media on Monday. The economic cost of the earthquake could reach “84.1 billion dollars”, indicated the same source.