Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reported Friday that 18,991 people have died in his country alone as a result of the earthquakes registered on Monday on the southern border with Syria, where the death toll has risen to 3,384, bringing the total to 22,375.
Erdogan has also stressed that some 75,000 people have been brought to safety despite the «setbacks» suffered by rescue teams. For its part, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), under the Ministry of the Interior, has detailed that the number of injured people has already reached 74,242, as reported by the Turkish state news agency Anatolia.
During the early hours of the morning, emergency services have continued to rescue people from under the rubble nearly 100 hours after the earthquakes, an increasingly complicated task since the standard time that a human being can remain without food or water intake in disasters such as this is 72 hours.
While the work of the emergency services continues, the Turkish authorities have promised to take action against negligence in housing construction, as poor construction is suspected to have played a role in the high number of deaths.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has reported that a total of 97 countries have offered assistance and that search and rescue teams from 61 others are involved in debris removal efforts in the affected areas. In total, there are some 6,810 people on the ground from other nations assisting.
Meanwhile, the earthquakes have left almost 3,384 people dead and 5,200 injured in Syria, between the figures offered by the health authorities of the government of Bashar al-Assad and those of the rebels in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo (northwest), according to the Syrian Civil Defense, known as ‘white helmets’.
In view of this situation, the United Nations has already sent a first convoy of humanitarian aid to Syria through the Bab al Hawa border crossing in the northwest of the country. This included up to six trucks with relief supplies and sheds, although Guterres has stressed that there is «more aid on the way».
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
