Turkey-Syria earthquake updates: Assad allows more UN aid access
All the updates from February 13 as they happened.
This live blog is closed, thank you for joining us. These were the updates on the Turkey-Syria earthquakes on Monday, February 13.
This live blog is closed, thank you for joining us. These were the updates on the Turkey-Syria earthquakes on Monday, February 13.
- Rescuers continue to pull out more survivors from the rubble in Turkey and Syria as the death toll from last week’s earthquakes topped 36,000.
- The quakes have killed at least 31,643 people in Turkey as of Monday, and 4,614 people in Syria.
- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to let the United Nations deliver aid to Syria through two more border crossings from Turkey for three months, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told a closed-door UN Security Council meeting, diplomats told the Reuters news agency.
- The UN aid chief has said rescue efforts are coming to a close and that the world has so far failed people in northwest Syria, saying survivors there “rightly feel abandoned”.
- The UN says up to 5.3 million people in Syria may be homeless after the earthquakes. Nearly 900,000 people are in urgent need of hot food in Turkey and Syria.
- In Syria, aid from government-held regions into the rebel-controlled territory has been held up by approval issues with the Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham armed group, according to the UN.
You can find information on how to donate to earthquake relief efforts here.
Syria’s Assad agrees to more UN aid access from Turkey: diplomats
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to let the United Nations deliver aid to Syria through two more border crossings from Turkey for three months. The development was disclosed by UN aid chief Martin Griffiths at a closed-door UN Security Council meeting, diplomats told Reuters.
Waiting into the night for a miracle rescue in Antakya
Antakya, Turkey – “Canlı! Canlı!” has been the most hopeful cry heard in the streets of Antakya since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake sent waves of death and destruction across 10 provinces in southern Turkey as well as parts of Syria a week ago.
Shouts by search and rescue teams to announce they had found someone “alive” send people running from all directions to focus their attention on what at this point of the disaster response seems like a miracle.
Read the full story here.
Death toll in northwestern Syria at 2,274: Rescue group
The White Helmets rescue group says the latest earthquake death toll in opposition-held areas of northwestern Syria stands now at 2,274.
It said more than 12,400 people have been injured. The volunteer group said the figures are based on double-checking with medical sources.
Is Istanbul ready for a major earthquake?
Turkey’s megacity Istanbul should start preparing now for a powerful earthquake that could strike at anytime and mobilise all available resources to save lives and lessen the economic impact, experts say.
Hundreds of people were killed in Istanbul in a 1999 magnitude 7.6 earthquake with an epicentre located about 100km (65 miles) southeast of the city.
Scientists who talked to Al Jazeera said another major temblor is highly likely to strike Turkey’s largest city as the nation mourns the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the country’s southeast a week ago.
Read the full story here.
At least 1,302 dead Syrians brought back to their country
The number of Syrians killed in last week’s earthquakes who have been brought back to their country from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing has risen to 1,302, a border official tells Al Jazeera.
White House prepared to provide all necessary aid to earthquake survivors
The United States is prepared to provide any aid required for earthquake survivors in Turkey and Syria, the White House says as it also urges the UN to open additional border crossings to Syria.
“It’s critical for the [UN] Security Council to authorize two additional crossings to deliver life-saving assistance,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “We cannot delay any longer.”
University students asked to vacate dormitories to shelter quake survivors
Turkish President Erdogan has announced that university accommodation will be used to house those affected by the earthquakes.
Students in Istanbul have been leaving their university dorms to make room for survivors.
More than a million people have been made homeless by last week’s quakes, and authorities in Turkey and Syria are trying to find places for them to stay.
Quakes fuel anti-Syrian feelings in Turkey
Last week’s earthquakes have aggravated tensions between Turks and Syrian refugees as some Turks in quake-hit towns and cities have accused Syrians of robbing damaged shops and homes.
Anti-Syrian slogans such as “We don’t want Syrians,” “Immigrants should be deported” and “No longer welcome” trended on Twitter.
Syrians left homeless by the earthquakes said they had been kicked out of emergency camps, and a Syrian man opened a shelter in the city of Mersin just for his compatriots after they had faced racist slurs.
“We stopped going to rescue sites to watch because people started screaming at us and pushing us around when they heard us speaking Arabic,” a Syrian man, who didn’t want to be named, told the Reuters news agency. “People accuse us of looting all the time, but that’s just to create discord.”
Turkey has taken in nearly 4 million Syrian refugees after opening its borders to those fleeing the war that erupted there in 2011.
Turkey-Syria earthquakes: One week on
Al Jazeera marks one week since two deadly earthquakes devastated Turkey and Syria.
UN calls for ‘much more support’ for Syria
Kelly Clements, deputy high commissioner of the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR), says last week’s earthquakes have caused “complete devastation” in parts of Syria.
“In some places, it just looks like the earthquake took a knife through the middle of a building and knocked out half of it,” she told Al Jazeera from Aleppo.
“There’s rubble on the streets. There are people, families and children that are in parks. There are tents in multiple locations, and it’s cold, really cold,” Clements said.
“Shelter remains the largest single need right at the moment for the many people that are displaced, but there is also large, deep trauma now with families who have experienced year after year of crisis here.”
Clements said UNHCR was “seriously underfunded”, warning that the agency would need “much more support to be able to get to places like Aleppo and other parts of this country, given the large number of people that are displaced are in the northwest”.
Ten-year-old girl rescued after 183 hours trapped in rubble in Turkey
Rescue workers have saved a 10-year-girl from the rubble of an apartment block in the southern Turkish province of Kahramanmaras, 183 hours after an initial earthquake shook the region a week ago, state broadcaster TRT Haber reports.
‘I didn’t think we’d find any survivors’: White Helmets volunteer
Salam al-Mahmoud is a 24-year-old volunteer with the Syria Civil Defence team, also known as the White Helmets.
She has been involved in search and rescue missions in rebel-held northwest Syria since the earthquakes struck Syria and Turkey last week.
Here, Salam recounts to Al Jazeera her experience.
Quakes cause health fears to grow in cholera-hit Syria
Aid groups and public health experts warn the devastating earthquakes could exacerbate a cholera outbreak in Syria first detected last year.
“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 UNICEF in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
“More than half of people in Syria depend on unsafe alternative water sources when it comes to their water needs, and that, of course, increases vulnerability to fast-spreading waterborne diseases such as cholera,” Hines told Al Jazeera.
Read the full story here.
Woman rescued after 177 hours, 12-year-old after 182 in Hatay
The chances of finding survivors are shrinking with each passing hour, yet rare stories of survival are still emerging.
In this picture, Saadet Sendag expresses relief as his mother is rescued after 177 hours at the site of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey.
In the Antakya district of Hatay, a 12-year-old is rescued after 182 hours.Looters ransack damaged buildings after Turkey quake
With homes and businesses damaged or destroyed in southern Turkey, looting has become a concern.
Al Jazeera reports from the Turkish city of Antakya.
Turkey offers to open two border crossings into NW Syria
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says he has offered to open two border crossings with Syria for the international community to send humanitarian aid to the quake-hit northern parts of Turkey’s neighbour.
“We told the international community and the UN that they could send humanitarian aid through the two gates under our control,” Cavusoglu said during a joint news conference with his Libyan counterpart, Najla al-Mangoush, in Ankara.
The diplomat referred to two border gates in Kilis province.
“It is out of the question for Türkiye to open border crossings in places [in Syria] controlled by the PKK and YPG,” he said, referring to two Kurdish groups that Ankara labels as “terrorists”.
Turkey arrests property developers in collapsed buildings investigation
Turkey has issued more than 100 arrest warrants in connection with the construction of buildings that collapsed in last week’s earthquakes.
Civil engineers say many projects in southeastern Turkey were not built to code.
Quake survivors need papers to come to Germany: Foreign ministry
With its large Turkish and Syrian communities, Germany offers the prospect of shelter and care to earthquake survivors with relatives in the country – but only if they can fulfil existing visa requirements, the foreign ministry says.
Berlin’s goal is to make it quicker and easier for such people to come to Germany within the existing framework, a ministry spokesperson said.
“Missing passports are, of course, a problem. Those who have lost everything are unlikely to have a passport, but we cannot simply undermine the passport sovereignty of the Turkish authorities and issue travel documents for foreigners just like that,” the spokesperson told reporters at a regular government news conference in Berlin.
‘What do I have left?’: Survivors grapple with loss
Thousands of people left homeless by massive earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago are packing into crowded tents or lining up in the streets for hot meals in the Turkish town of Adiyaman, The Associated Press reports.
Almost no houses were left standing in the village of Polat, about 100km (62 miles) from the epicentre. Residents have salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes. Not enough tents have arrived for the homeless, survivor Zehra Kurukafa said, and families have been forced to share the tents that are available.
“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families,” Kurukafa said.
In the city of Adiyaman, 25-year-old Musa Bozkurt waited for a vehicle to bring him and others to the city of Afyon in western Turkey. “We’re going away, but we have no idea what will happen when we get there,” Bozkurt said. “We have no goal. Even if there was [a plan], what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle.
“What do I have left?”
Earthquakes could cost Turkey $84bn: Business group
Turkey’s worst earthquake in almost a century and the aftershocks that have followed have left a trail of destruction that could cost Ankara up to $84.1bn, a business group says.
The report by the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation said the cost would include an estimated $70.8bn from the repair of thousands of homes, $10.4bn from loss of national income and $2.9bn from loss of working days.
It said the main costs would be rebuilding housing, transmission lines and infrastructure and meeting the short-, medium- and long-term shelter needs of the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the state will complete housing reconstruction within a year and the government is preparing a programme to “make the country stand up again”.
Seventy-year-old rescued 178 hours after earthquakes
A 70-year-old woman, Nuray Gurbuz, was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed three-storey building in Turkey’s Hatay province 178 hours after deadly earthquakes hit the region.
Drone footage shows canyons left by earthquakes in Turkey
Footage shows large fissures in Altinozu, Turkey.
Officials have said more than 2,000 earthquakes have hit the wider area in the past seven days.
How do people survive for days under the rubble?
Surviving an earthquake and being trapped under rubble for days requires luck and access to water, according to Dr Malcolm Russell of the UK International Search and Rescue Team.
“These stories are really incredible. We know that people can survive for an extraordinary amount of time,” Russell told Al Jazeera from Antakya, Turkey, as rescuers continued to reach a handful of survivors a week after the quakes.
“What they need in an earthquake situation, I have to say there’s a degree of luck. They’d have to end up in an area – we would call it a survivable void space – it might not be big, but somewhere where they’re not physically crushed,” he said. “Then it’s a question of their physiology. The main issue is lack of water and dehydration.”
“And no doubt an element to all this is emotional resilience, incredible resilience, retaining some hope,” he added. “And in many cases, having the sense to continue to make noise because that noise can travel through the rubble pile, and we can use sensitive equipment to listen to that.”
Girl rescued in Turkey after 178 hours in rubble
A girl named Miray has been rescued from the rubble of an apartment block in the southern Turkish city of Adiyaman after being trapped for 178 hours, a minister and media reports said.
Broadcaster CNN Turk said the girl is six years old and rescuers were also close to reaching her older sister. Turkish Transport Minister Adil Karaismailoglu had said earlier that she is four years old.
Rescuers working to save mother and child in Kahramanmaras
Reporting from Kahramanmaras, Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker said rescue workers were believed to be just metres away from reaching a mother and child who thermal imaging has indicated may still be alive.
“They are now tunneling from two angles … to try and get to the area where they are believed to be. But is extremely dangerous work,” Dekker said from the city, which was closest to the initial earthquake’s epicentre.
She added that family were waiting at the scene during the more than 24-hour effort, in which rescuers had to contend with two more earthquakes overnight.
“It’s incredibly difficult and sensitive work,” she said.