Turkey-Syria quake toll tops 7,800 as rescuers battle cold
The latest death toll from Monday’s catastrophic earthquake has passed 7,800.
In Turkey, 5,894 people are confirmed to have been killed, while 1,932 people have died in Syria for a combined total of 7,826 fatalities. There are fears that the toll will rise inexorably, with World Health Organization officials estimating up to 20,000 may have died.
But some extraordinary survival tales have emerged, including a newborn baby pulled alive from rubble in Syria, still tied by her umbilical cord to her mother who died in Monday’s quake.
“We heard a voice while we were digging,” Khalil al-Suwadi, a relative, told AFP. “We cleared the dust and found the baby with the umbilical cord (intact) so we cut it and my cousin took her to hospital.”
The infant is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest of whom were killed in the rebel-held town of Jindayris.
The 7.8-magnitude quake struck Monday as people slept, flattening thousands of structures, trapping an unknown number of people and potentially impacting millions.
Whole rows of buildings collapsed, leaving some of the heaviest devastation near the quake’s epicentre between the Turkish cities of Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras.
The destruction led to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declaring Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 southeastern provinces.
– ‘Children are freezing’ –
Dozens of nations including the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have begun to arrive by air.
Yet people in some of the hardest-hit areas said they felt they had been left to fend for themselves.
“I can’t get my brother back from the ruins. I can’t get my nephew back. Look around here. There is no state official here, for God’s sake,” said Ali Sagiroglu in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras.
“For two days we haven’t seen the state around here… Children are freezing from the cold,” he added.
A winter storm has compounded the misery by rendering many roads — some of them damaged by the quake — almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams that stretch for kilometres in some regions.
The cold rain and snow are a risk both for people forced from their homes — who took refuge in mosques, schools or even bus shelters — and survivors buried under debris.
“It is now a race against time,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable,” he added.
