UPDATED 3:50 p.m.
ANTAKYA, Turkey (Reuters) -The death toll of a devastating earthquake in southern Turkey and Syria jumped to more than 7,800 people on Tuesday as rescuers worked against time in harsh winter conditions to dig survivors out of the rubble of collapsed buildings.
As the scale of the disaster became ever more apparent, the death toll looked likely to rise considerably. One U.N. official said thousands of children may have died.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. But residents in several damaged Turkish cities voiced anger and despair at what they said was a slow and inadequate response from the authorities to the deadliest earthquake to hit Turkey since 1999.
“There is not even a single person here. We are under the snow, without a home, without anything,” said Murat Alinak, whose home in Malatya had collapsed and whose relatives are missing. “What shall I do, where can I go?”
Monday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, followed hours later by a second one almost as powerful, toppled thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injured tens of thousands, and left countless people homeless in Turkey and northern Syria.
Rescue workers struggled to reach some of the worst-hit areas, held back by destroyed roads, poor weather and a lack of resources and heavy equipment. Some areas were without fuel and electricity.
With little immediate help at hand, residents picked through rubble sometimes without even basic tools in a desperate hunt for survivors.
Aid officials voiced particular concern about the situation in Syria, already afflicted by a humanitarian crisis after nearly 12 years of civil war.
Erdogan declared 10 Turkish provinces a disaster zone and imposed a state of emergency for three months that will permit the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms.
The government will open up hotels in the tourism hub of Antalya to temporarily house people impacted by the quakes, said Erdogan, who faces a national election in three months’ time.
The death toll in Turkey rose to 5,894, Vice President Fuat Oktay said. More than 34,000 were injured. In Syria, the toll was at least 1,932, according to the government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest.
‘EVERY MINUTE, EVERY HOUR’
Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km (280 miles) from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south.
Syrian authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 250 km from the epicentre.
“It’s now a race against time,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes.”
Across the region, rescuers toiled night and day as people waited in anguish by mounds of rubble clinging to the hope that friends, relatives and neighbours might be found alive
In Antakya, capital of Hatay province bordering Syria, rescue teams were thin on the ground and residents picked through debris themselves. People pleaded for helmets, hammers, iron rods and rope.
One woman, aged 54 and named Gulumser, was pulled alive from an eight-storey building 32 hours after the quake.
Another woman then shouted at the rescue workers: “My father was just behind that room she was in. Please save him.”
The workers explained they could not reach the room from the front and needed an excavator to remove the wall first.
More than 12,000 Turkish search and rescue personnel are working in the affected areas, along with 9,000 troops. More than 70 countries offered rescue teams and other aid.
But the sheer scale of the disaster is daunting.
“The area is enormous. I haven’t seen anything like this before,” said Johannes Gust, from Germany’s fire and rescue service, as he loaded equipment onto a truck at Adana airport.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake and that 20,426 people had been injured.
Two U.S. Agency for International Development teams with 80 people each and 12 dogs are set to arrive Wednesday morning in Turkey and head to the southeastern province of Adiyaman to focus on urban search and rescue.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva that the earthquake “may have killed thousands of children.”
‘TERRIFYING SCENE’
Syrian refugees in northwest Syria and in Turkey were among the most vulnerable people affected, Elder said.
In the Syrian city of Hama, Abdallah al Dahan said funerals for several families were taking place on Tuesday.
“It’s a terrifying scene in every sense,” said Dahan, contacted by phone. “In my whole life I haven’t seen anything like this, despite everything that has happened to us.”
Mosques opened their doors to families whose homes were damaged.
The Syrian state news agency SANA said at least 812 people were killed in the government-held provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Tartous.
At least 1,120 people were killed in Syria’s opposition-held northwest with the toll expected to “rise dramatically”, the White Helmets rescue team said.
“There are lot of efforts by our teams, but they are unable to respond to the catastrophe and the large number of collapsed buildings,” group head Raed al-Saleh said.
A U.N. humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and the harsh weather were creating obstacles.
“The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged,” U.N. resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters from Damascus.
In Malatya, Turkey, locals with no specialist equipment or even gloves tried to pick through the wreckage of homes crumpled by the force of the earthquake.
“My in-laws’ grandchildren are there. We have been here for two days. We are devastated,” said Sabiha Alinak.
“Where is the state? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can rescue them. We can do it with our means.”
(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Mehmet Caliskan in Hatay, Umit Ozdal in Malatya, Ezgi Erkoyun, Daren Butler and Jonathan Spicer in Istanbul, Timour Azhari and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; and Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington;Writing by Angus MacSwan and Alistair Bell; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Rosalba O’Brien)
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ANTAKYA, Turkey (Reuters) – Overwhelmed rescuers struggled to save people trapped under the rubble as the death toll from a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose past 5,000 on Tuesday, with despair mounting and the scale of the disaster hampering relief efforts.
The magnitude 7.8 quake – Turkey’s deadliest since 1999 – hit early on Monday, toppling thousands of buildings including many apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals, and leaving thousands of people injured or homeless in Turkish and Syrian cities.
In the Turkish city of Antakya near the Syrian border, where 10-story buildings had crumbled onto the streets, Reuters journalists saw rescue work being conducted on one out of dozens of mounds of rubble.
The temperature was close to freezing as the rain came down and there was no electricity or fuel in the city.
Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south. In Syria, authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 100 km from the epicenter.
In Turkey, the death toll climbed to 3,419 people, Vice President Fuat Oktay said, adding that severe weather was making it difficult to bring aid to the regions.
In Syria, where the quake did further damage to infrastructure already devastated by 11 years of war, the death toll stands at just over 1,600, according to the government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest.
Freezing winter weather hampered search efforts through the night. A woman’s voice was heard calling for help under a pile of rubble in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Nearby, the body of a small child lay lifeless.
Weeping in the rain, a resident who gave his name as Deniz wrung his hands in despair.
“They’re making noises but nobody is coming,” he said. “We’re devastated, we’re devastated. My God … They’re calling out. They’re saying, ‘Save us’ but we can’t save them. How are we going to save them? There has been nobody since the morning.”
Families slept in cars lined up in the streets.
Ayla, standing by a pile of rubble where an eight-story building once stood, said she had driven to Hatay from Gaziantep on Monday in search of her mother. Five or six rescuers from the Istanbul fire department were working in the ruins – a sandwich of concrete and glass.
“There have been no survivors yet. A street dog came and barked at a certain point for long, I feared it was for my mother. But it was someone else,” she said.
“I turned on the lights of the car to help the rescue team. They took out only two bodies so far, no survivors.”
Ankara declared a “level 4 alarm” that calls for international assistance, but not a state-of-emergency that would lead to mass mobilization of the military.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake, which had been followed by 285 aftershocks, and that 20,426 people had been injured.
‘TERRIFYING SCENE’
The World Health Organization was especially concerned about areas of Turkey and Syria where no information had emerged since the quake struck, its chief said.
“It’s now a race against time,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes.”
In the Syrian city of Hama, Abdallah al Dahan said funerals of several families who perished were taking place on Tuesday.
“It’s a terrifying scene in every sense,” said Dahan, contacted by phone.
“In my whole life I haven’t seen anything like this, despite everything that has happened to us,” he added. Mosques had opened their doors to families whose homes were damaged.
The death toll in Syrian government-held areas rose to 812, the state news agency SANA reported.
In the rebel-held northwest, the death toll was more than 790 people, according to the Syrian civil defense, a rescue service known as the White Helmets and famous for digging people from the rubble of government air strikes.
“There are lot of efforts by our teams, but they are unable to respond to the catastrophe and the large number of collapsed buildings,” group head Raed al-Saleh said.
A top U.N. humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and the harsh weather were creating obstacles to its response.
“The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged, we have to be creative in how to get to the people,” U.N. resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters from Damascus.
The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the U.S. Geological Survey since one in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.
Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit Turkish cities, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess the impact and plan help.
With tight elections scheduled in just three months, President Tayyip Erdogan’s government faces a likely multi-billion-dollar reconstruction challenge just as he was ramping up his re-election campaign.
The economy, already strained by inflation at 58%, is expected to grow a bit less than previously expected this year, analysts say.
(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Mehmet Caliskan in Hatay, Umit Ozdal in Malatya, Ezgi Erkoyun, Daren Butler and Jonathan Spicer in Istanbul and Timour Azhari and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Writing by Rosalba O’Brien and Tom Perry; Editing by Stephen Coates, Robert Birsel)
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