Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ANTAKYA: Rescuers pulled survivors from the rubble, nearly a week after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Syria and Turkey, as Turkiye authority sought to maintain order across a disaster zone and started legal action over building collapses.
Death Toll Tops 33,000
With chances of finding survivors growing more remote, the toll in both nations from Monday’s earthquake and main aftershocks raised above 33,000 and looked set to keep growing. It had the deadliest quake in Turkiye since 1939.
In the central district of one of the worst destroyed cities, Antakya in southern Turkey, business owners emptied their shops to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.
Residents and aid employees from other cities cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed houses being robbed.
Facing questions over his response to the earthquake as he prepares for the national election expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, President Erdogan has said the government could deal firmly with looters.
In Syria, the disaster target hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving houseless yet again many citizens who had been displaced many times by a decade-old civil war. The region received little aid compared to government-held areas.
“We have so far failed the citizen in northwest Syria,” United Nations (UN) aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted from the Syria-Turkey border, where only the single crossing is open for UN fund supplies.
