Monitoring Desk
ANKARA: Rescue teams started winding down the search for survivors on Monday, a week after an earthquake devastated parts of Turkiye and Syria leaving over 35,000 dead and millions in dire need of aid.
While the focus switched to helping desperate survivors lacking shelter and food, stories continue to emerge of people found alive in the rubble seven days after the 7.8-magnitude tremor. On Monday, a 12 years old boy, Kaan was pulled alive from the debris in southern Hatay, 182 hours after the fifth-deadliest earthquake of the 21st century, reported the Turkish media. However, the experts have warned that hopes of finding people alive were dimming.
The confirmed death toll stands at 35,224 as medics and officials said that at least 3,581 people had died in Syria and 31,643 in Turkiye. According to the United Nations, the toll is expected to rise far higher. The UN has decried the failure to ship desperately-needed aid to the war-torn regions of Syria and warned that the death toll is set to rise even higher amid caution by the experts that hopes for finding people alive dim with each passing day.
Read Also: Rescue Teams Save More Survivors of Earthquakes in Turkey
“Send any stuff you can as there are millions of people here and they all need to be fed,” Suleyman Soylu, Turkish Interior Minister made an appeal to Turks late Sunday. In Kahramanmaras, close to the epicentre, around 30,000 tents have been erected, 48,000 people are sheltering in schools and another 11,500 in sports halls, he added. While hundreds of rescue teams still working, efforts had ended in at least seven parts of the province, he said. The survivors lack water and facing poor sanitation.
Quake could cost Turkiye up to $84 billion
The earthquake has left a trail of destruction that could cost Turkey up to $84.1 billion, said a business group. On the other hand, a government official put the figure at over $50bn.
A report published by the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation at the weekend put the cost of the damage at $84.1bn — $10.4bn from loss of national income, $70.8bn from the repair of thousands of homes, and $2.9bn from loss of working days. It further said the main costs would be rebuilding infrastructure, housing, transmission lines and meeting the short, medium and long-term shelter needs of the hundreds of thousands left homeless.
Lack of aid in northern Syria
In Antakya, clean-up teams started to evacuate debris and install toilets as the telephone network started returning in parts of the town, said an AFP reporter. The city was patrolled by a strong military and police presence which authorities deployed to prevent looting following several such incidents over the weekend.
The rescue teams said, in many areas, they lacked sensors and advanced equipment, leaving them limited to carefully searching the rubble with shovels or only their hands.
Supplies have been slow to reach Syria, where years of conflict have ruined the healthcare system, while parts of the country remain under the control of rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad’s government which is under Western sanctions.
But a 10-truck United Nations convoy crossed into northwest Syria via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing carrying rope, blankets, shelter kits, plastic sheeting, mattresses and carpets, according to an AFP correspondent.
