At least 8,574 people have died in Turkey, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday. At least 2,530 have been killed in Syria.
Erdogan has travelled to some of the most affected areas. On Tuesday, he had announced a three-month state of emergency across 10 provinces, while aid agencies grapple with the complicated logistics of sending emergency assistance to war-hit Syria.
More than 12,000 Turkish search-and-rescue personnel are working in the affected areas, along with 9,000 troops. More than 70 countries have offered rescue teams and other aid.
Rescue teams found a young Syrian refugee under the rubble of a collapsed building in the southern Turkish town of Hatay.
The workers gave the boy water from a bottle cap before pulling him out, nearly 45 hours after the first of two major earthquakes.
Hundreds of bodies in stadiums and parking lots lie on the ground as relatives carefully lift blankets from their faces to try to identify them.
Nada, a Syrian woman, and her Turkish husband ask a staff member how best to find their niece and aunt among the more than 100 bodies lined up in the parking lot of the Hatay Research Hospital near the southern city of Antakya, Reuters reported.
“My wife doesn’t speak Turkish, and I can’t see very well,” the husband, who did not give a name, tells the news agency. “We have to check all the faces. We need help.”
Many of those killed in the tremor are wrapped in body bags, blankets or tarpaulin, awaiting relatives or friends to find them and take them from the field hospital.
They have been placed in tents or on the pavement outside the 1,130-bed hospital, built in 2016, now too damaged by the earthquake to house them.
Some have tags with identifying information, some do not. Relatives who locate loved ones are issued a death certificate and burial permission from the on-site prosecutor, then they remove them in their own vehicles.
One woman who could not find her sister yelled: “My God, look how we are, we will be thankful if we find dead bodies of our people.”
The bodies of victims are kept at a sports hall in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, February 8, 2023.
The bodies of victims are kept at a sports hall following a deadly earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey [Dilara Senkaya/Reuters]
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has acknowledged that there were some issues in responding on the first day since the earthquakes but has urged Turkish people to be patient and united.
He said there had been problems with roads and airports but that everything would get better by the day.
Erdogan also said citizens should only heed communication from authorities and ignore “provocateurs,” as thousands of people complain about a lack of resources and slow response by officials.New houses will be built, he said, promising that no one will be left in the streets.“This is the time for us to be united,” Erdogan added.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the death toll in the country from Monday’s earthquakes has reached 8,574, even as rescue workers are continuing to search for victims buried under mountains of rubble.
Erdogan was speaking from Kahramanmaras during a visit to some of the areas worst hit by the temblors.
At least 2,530 people have died in Syria, according to a tally of numbers made public by the government in Damascus and rescue groups in rebel-held regions, taking the total death toll from the earthquakes to in excess of 11,000.
Rescuers and civilians look for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre, the day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country's southeast, on February 7, 2023. - Rescuers in Turkey and Syria braved frigid weather, aftershocks and collapsing buildings, as they dug for survivors buried by an earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people. Some of the heaviest devastation occurred near the quake's epicentre between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, a city of two million where entire blocks now lie in ruins under gathering snow. (Photo by Adem ALTAN / AFP)
Rescuers and civilians look for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, close to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake’s epicentre, a day after it struck the country’s southeast [Adem Atlan/AFP]
Syria has activated the European Union civil protection mechanism, Janez Lenarcic, the bloc’s commissioner for crisis management, has said.
“Earlier today, this morning, we have received a request from the government of Syria for assistance through the civil protection mechanism,” Lenarcic told reporters.
Lenarcic said the EU is “encouraging” member countries to respond to Syria’s request while monitoring to ensure that any aid “is not diverted” by the sanctioned government in Damascus.
A hospital in Salqin, in opposition-controlled northern Syria, has run out of space, forcing doctors to leave bodies outside, says Al Jazeera’s Suhaib al-Khalaf.
“Some bodies are placed outside the hospital because there is no longer room inside,” said al-Khalaf, reporting from the earthquake-hit region.
“And people are still waiting to receive the bodies of their loved ones to bury them,” she said, adding that ordinary cars were now being used to ferry bodies to hospitals since there are not enough ambulances available.
“Machines are working, digging holes, trying to get to the people,” he reported, standing in front of one of the hundreds of buildings that collapsed in the city.
“Last night, a rescue team saved a 14-year-old girl. She was still alive,” he added.
“When the rescue team took her out, the first thing that she said was, ‘Please save my father as well.’ Her father was very close to her and he was also alive. Later, during the night, her father was also pulled out from the rubble, but two of the other family members, unfortunately, could not survive.”
Pope Francis has offered his prayers for the thousands of victims of the earthquakes and called on the international community to continue to support rescue and recovery efforts.
“I am praying for them with emotion and I wanted to say that I am close to these people, to the families of the victims and everyone who is suffering from this devastating disaster,” he said.
“I thank those who are offering help and encourage everyone to show solidarity with these countries, some of which have already been battered by a long war,” he added at the end of his weekly audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall in the Vatican.
Pictures emerge showing another successful rescue operation. A young Turkish boy is saved after being pulled out from under a destroyed building in Hatay, one of the country’s worst-affected areas.
Osama al-Hussein, Syria’s programmes coordinator for the humanitarian organisation MEHAD, spoke to Al Jazeera from Idlib.
“The earthquake has worsened an already dramatic situation here in Syria, which was affected by almost 12 years of war. People don’t know where to go,” al-Hussein said.
“I visited many locations that were destroyed by the earthquakes and you can hear the voices under the rubble. I visited Sarmada and Jindires and other places, and the situation is catastrophic,” he said.
“The local teams, the rescuers, the NGOs and White Helmets are doing their best, but this is not enough … because there is a huge shortage in all means of words: medications, shelters. People are terrified,” he added, urging international intervention.
“People are completely destroyed from inside, first by the years of war and now by this,” al-Hussein said, overwhelmed by tears.
Rescue workers are continuing their race against time to find survivors.
“Another miracle,” said the White Helmets, a rescue organisation operating in rebel-control areas in northwestern Syria.
“A child rescued after more than 40 hours of being trapped under the rubble of her house in the city of Salqin in the countryside of Idlib,” it added in a Twitter post.
Turkish President Erdogan to travel to quake-hit areas
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will go to the country’s southern region to inspect areas struck by the earthquakes, state-run Anadolu news agency has said.
Erdogan is expected to visit Kahramanmaras city centre first and then the Pazarcik district that was the epicentre of one of Monday’s earthquakes, the agency repoted. The president is later expected to head to Hatay for inspections, it added.
‘No longer a rescue operation’: AJ correspondent
Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker is in Gaziantep and gave a chilling account as rescue workers raced against time to find survivors.
“Unfortunately, where we are here, and also at another location that we just returned from, it is a recovery operation, it is no longer a rescue operation,” Dekker said.
“Around 80 people, bodies at this stage as rescue workers are saying, are believed to be under the rubble of this apartment. They are no longer hearing voices,” she said.
“We just came back from another location where we saw a body being pulled from the rubble. It was a father. His daughter was there, she was sobbing – all the family members were there.
“Absolutely heartbreaking to see,” she added.
