Survivors rescued from rubble 100 hours after earthquake

A second convoy of aid trucks arrived from Turkey in stricken northwestern Syria as rescuers continued to pull survivors, including a newborn baby, from the rubble 100 hours after the earthquake that killed more than 24,000 people.

Hundreds of thousands more were left homeless and without food in winter conditions, often in sub-zero temperatures, after the magnitude 7.8 and 7.6 earthquakes struck on Monday hours apart, according to The Guardian. Dozens of countries have pledged to help and sent ambulances.

In Samandag in the southern Turkish province of Hatay, a 10-day-old boy named Yagiz was rescued from a collapsed building at night, while in Kırıhan, German rescuers pulled Zeynep Kahraman, 40, alive from the rubble more than 104 hours after she was buried in the rubble of a collapsed building and carried to a waiting ambulance.

“Now I believe in miracles,” says Steven Bayer, head of the international search and rescue team. You can see people crying and hugging each other. It is such a huge relief that this woman in such conditions came out so strong. It’s an absolute miracle.”

A 10-year-old boy was also rescued at night with his mother in the Samandag Hatay area after being trapped for more than 90 hours, while in Diyarbakir in the east, 32-year-old Sebahat Varli and her son Serhat were pulled out alive 100 hours after first earthquake.

However, hopes that many more people would be found alive were fading by the hour. Barely 6% of earthquake victims who were not rescued within five days survive, compared with 74% after 24 hours, experts say. Cold conditions are likely to significantly shorten lifespan.

In the Syrian city of Jindires, a Reuters reporter spoke to Nasser al-Waqaa, who was sobbing as he sat on a pile of rubble and twisted metal that was his family’s home, his face buried in baby clothes belonging to one of his children. “Bilal, oh Bilal,” he called out the name of one of his dead children.

Rabbi Jundiya, a rescuer from Jindires, said: “The civil defense teams will not retreat…until the last corpse is removed from the rubble.”

In Gaziantep, Turkey, where temperatures were -3C on Friday morning, thousands of families spend the night in cars or makeshift tents unable to return to their damaged or destroyed homes. “I fear for those trapped under the rubble,” Melek Khaliji told Agence France-Presse as she wrapped her two-year-old daughter in a blanket.

The International Organization for Migration said on Friday that 14 humanitarian aid trucks bound for northwestern Syria were carrying badly needed heaters, tents, blankets and other supplies. This is an area where a civil war left 90% of the population – about 4 million people – in need of help even before the earthquakes hit.

Trucks bound for Idlib followed a convoy of six UN trucks that crossed the only border crossing opened on Thursday at Bab el-Hawa. The World Food Program said on Friday that stocks in the area are running out fast and called for more crossings to open.

Turkey and Syria broke off diplomatic relations more than a decade ago, but Turkish officials said the country is considering reopening border crossings in Syrian government-controlled territory, plus a second in the rebel-controlled northwest.

Officials and medics have said at least 20,655 people have died in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria. The confirmed total has topped 24,200. But experts said the death toll is expected to continue to rise for some time to come as most people were sleeping in their apartments when the first quake struck and entire neighborhoods in some cities were reduced to rubble. The United Nations estimates that 24.4 million people have been affected in one way or another in Syria and Turkey.

The death toll from the quake surpassed the more than 17,000 deaths of the 1999 earthquake in northwestern Turkey, and the disaster is the seventh deadliest of this century, surpassing Japan’s 2011 tremors and tsunami. year.

The U.S. has offered an $85 million aid package that it says will provide “urgently needed assistance to millions of people,” including food, shelter and emergency medical services, as well as support for safe drinking water and sanitation.

The World Bank said it would provide Turkey with $1.78 billion in aid. Top aid officials are planning to visit the affected areas, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, and UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths are planning trips.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first trip to the affected areas since Friday’s earthquake, while Turkish President Erdogan toured his country’s stricken south amid continued criticism of the state’s response to natural disasters.

Speaking in Adiyaman province, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged that the Turkish authorities’ response to the earthquake was not moving as fast as the government would have liked. He said that some people were stealing from the markets and attacking businesses.

The catastrophe has cast doubt on whether the Turkish elections on May 14 will proceed as planned, writes The Guardian. The government’s response to the quake, widely criticized as slow and inadequate, is likely to prove to be an important factor if and when the vote, expected to be Erdogan’s busiest since he came to power in 2014, actually takes place.

Amid opposition claims that “lack of coordination, lack of planning and government incompetence” was as big a disaster as the earthquake itself, President Erdogan called for solidarity and denounced what he called “negative campaigns for political interests.”

The Syrian government, under heavy Western sanctions, has asked the UN for help but insists it must be delivered via Damascus rather than directly to militant-held areas.