ANKARA, 10 Feb 2023:
Turkiye president Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday denounced reports of looting in some of Turkiye’s worst-affected areas by twin earthquakes this week that have killed over 19,000 people in Turkiye and Syria.
Erdogan told reporters that 16,170 people were confirmed to have died in Turkiye as a result of the earthquakes that on Monday rocked southern Turkiye and northern Syria.
Over 64,000 were injured by the quakes and series of aftershocks, he told the media during a visit to quake-struck Osmaniye.
Government and opposition authorities in neighbouring Syria said the death toll in the Arab nation was at least 3,162, with casualties expected to rise.
Turkiye’s president earlier visited Gaziantep, a city close to the epicentre of the first quake, where he vowed to take measures against alleged looting in the disaster zones.
“We see looting in markets and shopping centres,” Erdogan said, adding that a three-month state of emergency that came into force yesterday would help address the situation.
Erdogan, who visited the provinces of Adana, Hatay and Kahramanmaras on Wednesday, has come under fire from opposition politicians and the public for what many believe has been a slow and inadequate government response to the disaster – which has devastated infrastructure and disrupted access to water, fuel, electricity and communications in 11 provinces amid sub-zero temperatures, rain and snow.
In his statement, the Turkish leader – who has been in power since 2002 and is facing re-election in polls slated for May – accused his opponents of “political abuse.”
“My citizens, my people will never give credit to this abuse,” Erdogan said, adding that the state of emergency would “give the state the opportunity to intervene (…) against all moneylenders, sedition groups, and conspiracy groups who exploit this process in Turkiye, who lead to corruption in trade.”
While hopes of finding survivors 80 hours after the magnitude-7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes are fading rapidly, rescuers were able to rescue several people yesterday – including a 16-year-old boy, a 68-year-old woman and a seven-year-old girl from the rubble.
Local experts estimate that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped under the rubble of thousands of collapsed buildings, and there is still no information on the situation in many towns in the most-affected provinces.
Ovgun Ahmet Ercan, one of Turkiye’s leading geophysical engineers and earthquake scientists, told Anka news agency that he estimates the number of people still trapped under collapsed buildings to be up to 200,000. “The world has rarely seen such a disaster.”
In Syria, the White Helmets civil defence force, which works in opposition-controlled areas, said earlier the death toll there had risen to more than 1,900 with over 2,950 injured.
“We are at a critical point… Time is running out, hundreds of families are still stuck under the rubble. Every second means saving a life. 75+ hours after the earthquake, our teams continue search operations amid great difficulties and need for heavy machinery to remove rubble,” the group tweeted.
At least 1,262 people lost their lives and 2,285 were injured in the areas controlled by president Bashar al-Assad’s government, which has not updated its casualty figures since Wednesday.
Syrian authorities announced Wednesday that some 293,000 people in government-held areas have had to flee their homes as a result of the earthquakes.
The first convoy with UN humanitarian aid arrived yesterday to opposition-controlled areas in northwestern Syria through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, which links the Syrian province of Idlib with Turkiye, almost four days after the initial earthquake, a border official said.
The convoy is made up of six vehicles and is mainly carrying food, water and hygiene products, which are being unloaded at the border crossing itself and will be distributed in opposition areas by UN partner NGOs, said the source, who requested anonymity.
The aid shipment was already planned before the earthquakes struck on Monday as part of routine UN deliveries and was delayed as a result of the catastrophe.
These are the first supplies to enter Idlib since the initial earthquake in southeastern Turkiye early Monday morning.
Bab al-Hawa is the only direct route for supplies to enter opposition-held areas of Idlib and Aleppo provinces, home to more than 4 million people who were already dependent on humanitarian aid before the catastrophe and nearly 3 million internally displaced persons.
World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he met with Syria ambassador Haydar Ali Ahmad on Wednesday “to discuss the immediate health needs of people affected by the earthquake, as well as essential care for all Syrians suffering due to the prolonged conflict.”
“I reassured him of WHO’s support for all people in Syria,” he added.
Even before the earthquakes, Syria was suffering its worst humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of riots against Damascus in 2011 and the subsequent start of the civil war, with 90% of the population plunged into poverty, shortages of basic products and millions of displaced people.
– EFE