Turkish authorities on Thursday raised to more than 16,100 the death toll from earthquakes registered on Monday in the south of the country, near the border with Syria, a country in which more than 3,000 people have died, according to the latest balance sheets.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has detailed that 16,170 people have been confirmed dead so far, before adding that the number of injured has reached 64,194, according to the Turkish state news agency Anatolia.
«Hundreds of thousands of people are involved in the relief efforts. All kinds of equipment and vehicles from all over the country have been directed to the region,» stressed the Turkish leader, who has been in the affected area since Wednesday overseeing search and rescue efforts.
During the day, the Turkish Parliament approved the declaration of a state of emergency for a period of three months in the ten affected provinces, a proposal presented on Tuesday by Erdogan himself.
The earthquakes have left more than 3,000 people dead and 5,000 injured in Syria, of which 1,262 dead and 2,285 injured have been recorded in the areas of Syria controlled by the authorities, according to data from the Syrian Ministry of Health collected by the Syrian state news agency, SANA. These data correspond to the provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia, Tartus and Idlib areas held by government forces.
To the Syrian government figures must be added more than 1,900 dead and 2,950 wounded in rebel-held areas in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo (northwest), according to the Syrian Civil Defense, known as ‘white helmets’, through its Twitter account, where it has insisted that «the balance is expected to increase significantly, as hundreds of families remain trapped under the rubble more than 75 hours after the quake.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
