Two days after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed more than 15,000 people in Turkey and Syria, families gathered in the cold rain to build improvised tents out of tarps, rested on furniture rescued from the rubble, and waited in line for shoes and blankets, and whatever else that was available.
Many were upset that rescue teams with heavy apparatus took so long to arrive. Three bodies were rescued from a six-story building in Kahramanmaras, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited on Wednesday. There were at least six more casualties under the wreckage.
Turkey, Syria Earthquake Death Toll
In southern Turkey, buildings toppled onto roadways, leaving them impassable, and a fire station in Pazarcik was converted into a temporary burial home. The gaps in the remaining buildings' walls were large enough to squeeze through.
Broken glass litters the ground, threatening to lacerate the feet of survivors, the majority of whom are shoeless and still wearing the clothing they were wearing when the earthquake occurred two days earlier.
Early Thursday morning, the state-run Andalou News Agency announced that the death toll in Turkey had surpassed 12,000. According to the agency, known by its Turkish initials AFAD, 12,391 people have been killed and 62,914 wounded.
Erdogan, Turkey's preeminent leader for the last two decades, made his first visit to the disaster zone on Wednesday to inform his people of how much his government had already done to aid them and to urge them to "exercise patient" until additional relief arrived.
However, the leader of the main opposition party in the country rejected the appeal for unity, stating that Erdogan was "all accountable." Criticism of the government's response to the accident will only hinder Erdogan's reelection bid in May. The over-a-decade-long civil war in Syria complicates efforts to provide relief to the nation, as per NY Times.
Numerous refugees uprooted by the conflict reside in the quake-ravaged region of Turkey, and while help was not entering Syria, bodies were. At least 3,042 people perished in the earthquake in Syria, where more than a decade of civil conflict had already produced a humanitarian disaster, according to the state Health Ministry and the White Helmets relief organization.
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Erdogan Admits 'Shortcomings' in Earthquake Response
Meanwhile, after criticism of his government's response to the catastrophic earthquake that killed over 15,000 people in Turkey and Syria, Erdogan acknowledged "shortcomings" on Wednesday. The calamity's immensity, which destroyed thousands of structures and trapped an untold number of people, overwhelmed relief efforts already handicapped by frigid temperatures.
Survivors have been left to scavenge for food and shelter and, in some cases, have been forced to watch helplessly as their families screamed for aid, only to go silent beneath the rubble. Even as the death toll continues to increase, searchers continued to retrieve survivors from the rubble three days after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which is already one of the worst of this century.
As online criticism rose, Erdogan visited Kahramanmaras, one of the hardest-hit areas, and admitted issues with the response.vAs the endeavor nears the 72-hour mark when catastrophe experts believe the most probable time to save lives, the window of opportunity for rescuers to identify survivors is closing.
Yet, on Wednesday, rescuers extracted children from beneath a collapsed structure in the hard-hit Turkish province of Hatay, where entire swaths of communities were destroyed. The EU is preparing a March donors summit in Brussels to mobilize worldwide assistance for Syria and Turkey.
As a result of the magnitude of the destruction and the absence of relief in many regions, survivors reported feeling alone in their response to the tragedy.vIn their "race against time," the White Helmets, who are leading attempts to rescue those buried under debris in rebel-held regions of Syria, have pleaded for international assistance.
A senior UN official has asked to improve assistance access to rebel-held regions in the northwest, saying that relief supplies may soon run out. The topic of aid to Syria is complex, and the sanctioned government in Damascus has made a public appeal to the EU for assistance, according to the EU's crisis management commissioner, Janez Lenarcic.
A decade of civil war and Russian-Syrian aerial bombing had already destroyed hospitals, caused economic collapse, and caused energy, fuel, and water shortages.
Lenarcic highlighted that the European Commission is "encouraging" EU members to respond to Syria's request for medical supplies and food while also ensuring that any help "is not misdirected" by the administration of President Bashar al-Assad.
Dozens of countries, including the United States, China, and the Gulf States, have offered assistance, and search teams and relief supplies have arrived. On Monday, the European Union quickly dispatched emergency personnel to Turkey after a powerful earthquake shook the nation near the Syrian border.
As a result of EU sanctions placed since 2011 on Assad's regime for its ruthless crackdown on demonstrators that sparked a civil war, Russia initially provided Syria with relatively modest aid. Per Al Jazeera, the Turkey-Syria border is one of the most seismically active regions in the world. The magnitude of Monday's earthquake was the greatest since 1939 when 33,000 people perished in the eastern region of Erzincan.
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