Death toll in Turkey and Syria surges to more than 19,000
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said the death toll in his country from Monday’s devastating earthquake has now reached 16, 170, bringing the combined total of fatalities in Turkey and Syria to 19,362.
State officials in Syria said earlier on Thursday the death toll in government-controlled areas stands at 1,262, while 1,930 have been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country by the White Helmets civil defence group.
A total of 5,158 people have been reported injured across both government-controlled and rebel-held Syria. Erdoğan said 64,194 people had been reported injured in Turkey.
Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
Key events
And that’s it from me, Jon Henley. Thanks very much for following today – my colleague Rachel Hall will be picking up the reins for the next few hours.
Questions are starting to be raised – albeit anonymously – by supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about the feasibility of holding elections in Turkey, which are due on 14 May.
Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey with an increasingly iron grip since 2014, faces a tight race and any perception that his government has mishandled the response to the earthquake – as many Turks believe – could dent his chances further.
One official has told Reuters it was too early to make any decision on elections, noting that a three-month state of emergency had been announced and that about 15% of Turkey’s population lived in the areas affected by the earthquake.
“We will look at developments but at the moment there are very serious difficulties in holding an election on 14 May,” the official said.
Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said the UK would continue to work with the UN and others to support Turkey and Syria after the earthquakes, describing the situation in Syria as “considerably harder”.
“We will continue working with the Turkish authorities to find out what more they need, and we will continue coordinating through the United Nations and the White Helmets civil force in Syria,” he told a news conference in Rome, Reuters reports.
“Of course, the situation in Syria, for obvious reasons, is considerably harder and more complicated, but nevertheless, there are lives that need to be saved,” Cleverly said.
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AHAD, has recorded almost 650 aftershocks since two earthquakes – 7.8 and 7.6 in magnitude – struck on Monday, making rescue efforts even more difficult and dangerous as emergency teams comb through severely weakened buildings.
Aftershocks are smaller tremors that follow a larger earthquake, as the earth’s displaced crust adjusts after the main shock. They steadily decrease in magnitude and frequency according to a scientifically recognised pattern, but can continue for days or even weeks.
Death toll in Turkey and Syria surges to more than 19,000
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said the death toll in his country from Monday’s devastating earthquake has now reached 16, 170, bringing the combined total of fatalities in Turkey and Syria to 19,362.
State officials in Syria said earlier on Thursday the death toll in government-controlled areas stands at 1,262, while 1,930 have been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country by the White Helmets civil defence group.
A total of 5,158 people have been reported injured across both government-controlled and rebel-held Syria. Erdoğan said 64,194 people had been reported injured in Turkey.
Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
Here are some of the latest pictures to reach us from the regions affected by the disaster:
France has pledged €12m in emergency post-earthquake aid to Syrians, foreign ministry spokesman François Delmas has said, with the aid to be disbursed “through non-governmental organisations and the UN in all regions affected”.
After almost 12 years of war, Syria is divided between multiple regions, variously controlled by the government, which is under heavy western sanctions; jihadists and rebels; and semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities. Many quake victims are living in the last major opposition bastion, Idlib, in the north-west.
Agence France-Presse quoted Delmas as saying the French aid would include €5m for a UN fund providing cross-border aid to northwest Syria, another €5m for “several French and international NGOs working on emergency responses in the health, shelter, water, hygiene and sanitation sectors”, and that the final €2m “under review” was for urgent food aid.
Death toll in Turkey and Syria rises to at least 17,500
The combined death toll from the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday has climbed to more than 17,500, according to the latest figures from authorities and rescue organisations.
The number of people confirmed dead in Turkey has risen to 14,351, the country’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, said on Thursday, with 63,794 injured.
In Syria, state officials have said the death toll in government-controlled areas stands at 1,262, while 1,930 have been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country by the White Helmets civil defence group.
A total of 5,158 people have been reported injured across both government-controlled and rebel-held Syria. Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
The quake is on track to become Turkey’s deadliest since 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude tremor near the northwestern city of Izmit led to an official death toll of 17,127 – although many sources have said the true figure may have been almost three times higher.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), the global aid and relief NGO, which has been working in Syria since 2012, has said that two of its staff in the north-west of the country died as a result of Monday’s earthquake.
“Our colleagues Mohamed Shaabouk and Rowaida Glelate tragically passed away in their respective homes,” the IRC, headed by the former British foreign secretary David Miliband, said in a statement.
“They were committed and passionate individuals and were continuously focused on improving the lives of vulnerable people caught up in the Syrian crisis. The IRC is heartbroken over the loss of our colleagues and will work to support our staff and their families.”
Turkey has received pledges of aid from 95 countries and 16 international organisations since Monday’s devastating earthquake, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has said.
Çavuşoğlu told a press conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, that 6,479 rescue workers from 56 countries were already active in the 10 provinces affected by the quake, adding that teams from 19 more countries would be in place within 24 hours.
We are now racing against the clock to save lives together.
Soon we will provide relief aid, together.
Türkiye and Syria can count on the EU.
@SwedishPM and I will host a Donors’ Conference early March in Brussels.Let’s mobilise funds globally for the affected communities.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 8, 2023
The 27 EU leaders, gathered in Brussels for a summit, wrote to Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Thursday to express their “full solidarity” and to offer more emergency aid.
“We stand ready to further step up our support in close coordination with the Turkish authorities. Our thoughts will continue to be with you and your people,” they said.
“We are now racing against the clock to save lives together,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, tweeted.
Syria’s civil defence has raised the death toll in the opposition-held north-west of the country to at least 1,930, with more than 2,950 injured, Reuters reports.
Young girl trapped for three days pulled from rubble in Antakya
Peter Beaumont
Emergency crews working through the night in the city of Antakya, Turkey, pulled a young girl from the ruins of a building and rescued her father two hours later, the IHA news agency reported.
As they prepared to load the man into an ambulance, rescue crews told him that his daughter was alive and they were taking him to the same field hospital for treatment. “I love you all,” he whispered faintly to the rescue team.
In Diyarbakır, east of Antakya, rescuers freed a woman from a collapsed building in the early hours but found the three people next to her in the rubble dead, the DHA news agency reported.
Tens of thousands of people are thought to have lost their homes. In Antakya, former residents of a collapsed building huddled around an outdoor fire overnight into Thursday, wrapping blankets tightly around themselves to try to stay warm.
Serap Arslan, 45, said many people remained under the rubble of the nearby building, including her mother and brother. She said machinery had only started to move some of the heavy concrete on Wednesday. “We tried to clear the debris on our own, but unfortunately our efforts have been insufficient,” she said.
Selen Ekimen wiped tears from her face with gloved hands as she said her parents and brother were still buried. “There’s been no sound from them for days,” she said. “Nothing.”
You can read more from Peter’s report here.
At least 28,044 people have been evacuated from Kahramanmaras, one of the southern Turkish provinces hardest hit by Monday’s earthquake, including 23,437 by air and 4,607 by road and rail, Turkey’s disaster management agency has said.
It added that accomodation was being arranged for those affected in cooperation with the relevant provincial authorities.
