Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ANKARA: Rescuers rescued a 10-day-old baby and his mother on Friday trapped in the ruins of a building in Turkey, as President Tayyip Erdogan directed authorities to response faster to salvage the possible survivor of the massive earthquake’s.
Four days after the quake, the confirmed death toll from the region’s deadliest earthquake in two decades stood at more than 23,700 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria. Hundreds of thousands of more people have been left homeless and food-insecure this winter, and leaders in both countries have been questioned about their responses. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, his first reported trip to affected areas since the earthquake.
His government also accepted humanitarian aid deliveries across the country’s 12-year civil war frontlines, a move that could quicken the arrival of aid for millions of desperate people. The World Food Programme previously stated that supplies were running low in rebel-held northwest Syria due to the ongoing conflict.
The earthquake that struck on Monday, is the seventh-deadliest natural disaster in history, surpassing the tremor and tsunami of Japan and approaching the 31,000 killed by a quake in Iran in 2003. Erdogan paid a visit to Turkey’s Adiyaman province on Friday, admitting that the government’s response was not as quick as it could have been. He stated that, despite having the world’s largest search and rescue team, search efforts are not moving at the rate we would like.
He also claimed that shoplifting had occurred in some areas. Erdogan is running for re-election in a vote on May 14, and his opponents have used the issue to attack him. Because of the disaster, the election may now be postponed. With anger simmering over delays in services and aid and launching the rescue effort, the disaster is likely to factor into the election, if it takes place.
Erdogan, for whom the vote was seen to be his hardest test in two decades in power even before the earthquake, has called for unity and criticised what he has described as “negative campaigns for political interest”. The government’s response was criticised by Turkey’s main opposition party’s leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
The death toll from the powerful 7.8 magnitude quake and many powerful aftershocks has exceeded the more than 17,000 killed in 1999 when a similar powerful earthquake struck northwest Turkey. Turkey’s death toll rose to 20,213 on Friday, according to the country’s health minister. Over 3,500 people have been killed in Syria. Several people are still buried beneath the rubble.
White Helmets rescuers, rescued people
Across the border in Syria, White Helmets rescuers used their hands to dig through plaster and cement until they came across the bare foot of a young girl, still wearing pink pajamas, alive and free. But hopes that many more would be found alive were starting to fade.
Naser al-Wakaa sobbed as he sat on the rubbish and twisted metal that had been his family’s home in the Syrian town of Jandaris, burying his face in the baby clothes that had been owned by one of his children.
Bulent Yildirim, the head of Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation, visited Syria to assess the situation. He claimed that a missile had hit every single building. Turkish officials and the United Nations said 24.4 million people have been affected in Syria and Turkey, spanning roughly 450 kilometres from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. People were killed in Syria as far south as Hama, 250 kilometres from the border.
Many people have set up makeshift shelters in supermarket parking lots, mosques, along roadsides, and among the ruins. Survivors are frequently in need of food, water, and heat. According to state media, the aid deliveries across the frontlines agreed upon on Friday will be in collaboration with the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.
The UN had pushed for more aid to enter Syria, particularly the northwest, where it estimated more than four million people were in need before the earthquake. Since Monday, dozens of planeloads of aid have arrived in areas controlled by Assad’s government, but little has reached the northwest.
