Turkey-Syria earthquake updates: Death toll goes past 33,000
All the updates as they happened on Sunday, February 12.
This live blog is closed, thank you for joining us. These were the updates on the Turkey-Syria earthquakes on Sunday, February 12.
This live blog is closed, thank you for joining us. These were the updates on the Turkey-Syria earthquakes on Sunday, February 12.
- The death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey and northwestern Syria has exceeded 33,000 as rescue efforts continue.
- The number of deaths in Turkey has risen to 29,605 on Sunday, while more than 4,500 people have died in Syria.
- Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca says a baby was rescued from the debris in Hatay province 150 hours after the quakes hit the region.
- The United Nations says up to 5.3 million people in Syria may be homeless after the earthquakes, while nearly 900,000 people are in urgent need of hot food in Turkey and Syria.
- The Syrian government has approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside its control, according to state media.
- Turkey says it is working to open two new routes into rebel-held parts of Syria.
You can find information on how to donate to earthquake relief efforts here.
Quake death toll among Palestinians rises to 89: Ministry
The death toll among Palestinians as a result of the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria has risen to 89, after a family of five were found dead under the rubble in the Turkish city of Antakya, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it expects the number of casualties to increase as more bodies are being found under the rubble in the affected areas. It said 38 victims were confirmed in Turkey and 51 Palestinian refugees in Syria.
Palestine sends team for mental health support to quake survivors
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said it sent a team to provide mental health support to earthquake victims in Syrian shelters.
“Among the tens of thousands of victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, hundreds of children are languishing in hospitals and shelters without their families and homes,” read a statement issued by the group.
“Children have been going through difficult ordeals since the earthquake struck. Some of them miraculously escaped death, but after their physical survival, psychological support teams of the Palestine Red Crescent are working for their psychological survival,” the statement continued.
Turkey’s Hatay Airport resumes operations
Turkey’s Hatay Airport, located in one of the hardest-hit provinces, has resumed operations, Turkeyâs Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure has said.
“We quickly repaired the damage on the Hatay Airport runway. Our airport started to operate today,” the ministry said on its official Twitter page, sharing before and after images of the airport’s runway.
Hatay Havalimanı pistindeki hasarı hızlıca onardık.
Havalimanımız bugün hizmet vermeye baÅladı. pic.twitter.com/XBD628z8Av
— T.C. UlaÅtırma ve Altyapı BakanlıÄı (@UABakanligi) February 12, 2023
In Antakya, residents say security conditions are worsening
In Antakya, residents and aid workers who came from other cities have cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being looted.
Some residents who were left homeless by the earthquake and are now sleeping in their cars or tents have said their valuable belongings including gold have been stolen.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the government would deal firmly with looters, noting that a state of emergency had been declared. Under a presidential decree, the detention period for looters has been lengthened to four days from one.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Sunday that 57 people had been arrested for looting.
Qatar to send Turkey, Syria 10,000 cabins, caravans used during World Cup
Doha will send Turkey and Syria 10,000 cabins and caravans used during the FIFA World Cup, Qatari officials have said.
“In view of the urgent needs in Turkey and Syria, we have taken the decision to ship our cabins and caravans to the region, providing much-needed and immediate support to the people of Turkey and Syria,” a Qatari official told AFP.
The mobile homes were used for a few weeks when Qatar hosted the football World Cup last year. Officials indicated after the tournament that they would be donated.
The first shipment is set to leave Doha port for Turkey on Monday, with further deliveries expected in the coming days, the officials said.
WHO chief: Assad may consider opening more border crossings for Syria quake aid
The WHO chief has said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad voiced openness to more border crossings for aid to be brought to quake victims in rebel-held northwestern Syria.
World Health Organization Director-GeneralTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters he had met with the Syrian president in Damascus on Sunday afternoon to discuss the response to the devastating earthquake that has killed more than 33,000 people across Syria and Turkey.
Rebel-held areas in northwestern Syria, which has been ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, are in a particularly dire situation.
They cannot receive aid from government-held parts of Syria without Damascus’s authorisation, and the single border crossing open to shuttle aid from Turkey saw operations damaged in the quake.
Northern Cyprus town buries last of 39 people who were in Turkey for volleyball game
Mourners from a town in Northern Cyprus have buried the last of 39 people, including 24 children, who were killed in last week’s earthquake while in Turkey for a school volleyball tournament.
The children aged 11 to 14 – along with four teachers, 10 parents and one trainer – were killed when their hotel in the southeastern city of Adiyaman collapsed, burying them under mounds of rubble.
The team from Turkish Maarif College in Famagusta, in Turkish Cypriot-controlled Northern Cyprus, had travelled to Adiyaman for a match together with their trainers, teachers and parents.
They were caught in the devastating quake that hit southern Turkey and Syria in the early hours last Monday.
First European earthquake relief to Syria arrives in Beirut
A 30-tonne shipment of humanitarian aid from the Italian government – including four ambulances and 13 pallets of medical equipment – has landed in Beirut en route to Damascus in the first European earthquake relief to Syria.
The European Union’s envoy to Syria, Dan Stoenescu, said the EU was encouraging member states to provide help and that sanctions “do not impede the delivery of humanitarian aid”.
But he said the EU was seeking “sufficient safeguards” to ensure that help provided would reach vulnerable people, adding the Syrian government had a “record of aid diversion”.
“We call the authorities in Damascus not to politicise the humanitarian aid delivery, and to engage in good faith with all humanitarian partners and UN agencies to help people,” Stoenescu said.
Erdogan faces nationwide anger over slow, inadequate relief efforts
The earthquake hit as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Even before the disaster, his popularity had been falling due to soaring inflation and a slumping Turkish currency.
Some affected by the quake and opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on, and critics have questioned why the army, which played a key role after a 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner.
Erdogan has acknowledged problems, such as the challenge of delivering aid despite damaged transport links, but said the situation had been brought under control. He has called for solidarity and condemned “negative” politicking.
Quakes destroy more than 115 schools in Syria: UN
Recent earthquakes have destroyed more than 115 schools in Syria and damaged hundreds more, according to a United Nations update, Reuters reports.
More than 100 other schools were being used as makeshift shelters to host thousands displaced by the earthquake, which brought apartment blocks and even tiny rural homes crashing down on residents’ heads.
Probes into faulty construction of buildings in Turkey under way
As despair has bred rage at the agonisingly slow rescue efforts after recent earthquakes, the focus has turned to assigning blame.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people are under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes.
While the quakes were powerful, victims, experts and people across Turkey are blaming faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.
Turkey’s construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.
Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, said the state-run news outlet Anadolu Agency.
Temblors in Turkey among ‘world’s largest’ continental quakes, says seismologist
Earthquakes in Turkey earlier this week rank among the world’s largest continental quakes ever recorded, according to a Canadian seismologist.
Speaking to the Anadolu news agency, Edwin Nissen, a professor of seismology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said last Monday’s temblors in Turkey and Syria are among the top five or 10 continental quakes ever recorded.
“What makes it so damaging is the combination of its magnitude and its location and a densely populated part of Turkey and obviously bordering with a densely populated part of Syria,” he explained.
Saying that actually the largest earthquakes normally occur in the oceans, Nissen underlined, however, that these quakes were less powerful than continental earthquakes.
Amid cholera outbreak, health fears grow in quake-hit Syria
Aid groups and public health experts warn that a series of devastating earthquakes could exacerbate a cholera outbreak in Syria first detected last year.
The warnings come as rescue operations ceased in both opposition and government-held portions of Syria – and hope diminished amid remaining searches in Turkey – six days after a series of quakes hit the region.
Across war-torn Syria, where the United Nations has estimated that 5.3 million people have been left homeless by the disaster, “there was a perfect storm brewing before the earthquake – of increasing food insecurity, collapsing healthcare systems, the lack of access to safe water and poor sanitation”, said Eva Hines, chief of communications for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Read more here.
‘Our pain is immense’, says Turkish earthquake survivor
Serizan Agbas, 61, has been sleeping in a chair in the garden of a school since the earthquakes devastated the southeastern region of Turkey on February 6.
Agbas’s apartment block is still standing but was deemed not safe to provide shelter. So she stays out in the open and shares fire and food with rescuers.
“Our pain is immense. I have only 15 lira [$0.80] in my pocket, I don’t even have a cigarette,” she told Al Jazeera. “I have nothing to lose now, so I’m not afraid.”
Read more here.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah sends aid to Syria’s quake-hit Latakia
Lebanon’s powerful movement Hezbollah sent a convoy of 23 trucks carrying food and medical aid to Syria’s quake-stricken province of Latakia, a stronghold of the group’s allies.
“This the moment of support, the moment of assistance,” senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine told reporters in Lebanon’s capital Beirut.
Latakia, located in Syria’s northwestern region, is a stronghold for President Bashar al-Assad.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah is a key ally of al-Assad’s regime and has openly been fighting alongside his forces since April 2013.
The volunteer gravediggers of Jandaris
Hundreds of men were moving around in an open field in Jandaris, northwestern Syria. They seemed hard at work, lifting, calling out to each other, and carrying things around.
Upon closer inspection, the grim reality was revealed: The field was a cemetery which had not been much in use before the devastating earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria last week.
Now, it had become the site of mass graves, long trenches dug to inter hundreds of people who died in the quakes and their aftermath.
Men were rushing back and forth, unloading bodies wrapped in shrouds or body bags from trucks and passing them to others who were digging trenches big enough to accommodate 100 to 130 people a day.Read more here.
Death toll hits 33,000 in Turkey, Syria quake
Turkey’s disaster management authority says the death toll from Monday’s Turkey-Syria earthquakes has passed 30,000, with the United Nations warning that the final number may double.
Officials and medics said 29,605 people had died in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria from the 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 33,179.
Little girl rescued after 150 hours under rubble
Watch the moment rescuers save a little girl from under the rubble in Turkey’s Hatay province, 150 hours after a devastating earthquake caused the building to collapse on top of her.
Turkey arrests dozens of looters as security deteriorates
Turkish authorities said they have arrested 48 people who were caught stealing and defrauding victims through telephone calls.
“The properties are under risk as well as the lives of those inhabitants in the region,” said Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu.
“Since yesterday, we have been seeing videos on social media. The local residents – earthquake survivors – and some security were beating some of the looters.”
Syrian president thanks UAE for ‘huge’ aid after quake
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has thanked the United Arab Emirates for pledging tens of millions of dollars in aid to the quake-hit country, the presidency said in a statement.
“The UAE was among the first countries that stood with Syria and sent huge relief and humanitarian aid and search and rescue teams,” al-Assad said during a meeting in Damascus with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
In Antakya, an Indian search and rescue team have recovered a body from under the rubble.
Meanwhile, aid provisions have been set up in the city, with workers offering water bottles, food, blankets and diapers.
UN aid chief: We failed people in northwest Syria
The UN’s top humanitarian relief official, Martin Griffiths, has admitted it failed to provide help to people in Syria’s opposition-controlled region since Monday’s devastating earthquake.
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Griffiths said in a tweet.
“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can. That’s my focus now,” he added during a visit to the border area.
At the #Türkiye–#Syria border today.
We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria.
They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.
My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.
That’s my focus now.— Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) February 12, 2023
Families of the victims in the town of Jandaris, Idlib province, hoisted the UN flag upside down over buildings destroyed by earthquakes to condemn a lack of help from the organisation, according to opposition activist Osama Abo Zayd.
Quake victims who have been dug out of the rubble are now being buried in mass graves in Turkey’s Hatay province.
One cotton field has been transformed into an ‘earthquake cemetery’, with numbers marking where the victims are laid to rest.
Qatari emir arrives in Turkey to meet Erdogan
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani left Doha on Sunday morning to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Qatar News Agency.
Erdogan welcomed Al Thani at Istanbul’s Vahdettin Palace, according to presidential sources who shared a photo of the leaders on Twitter.
The Qatari emir, who is the first head of state to pay a visit to Turkey after the deadly earthquakes, is accompanied by an official delegation.
Family trapped under building rubble in Antakya
They were trapped but were still alive and could communicate with their family until a fire broke out on Tuesday night, after which the communication stopped.
“This is the seventh day now, everyone is tired, we just want to find the bodies in one piece. But we can’t find anything – probably they all got burned,” Erdem said.