Death toll from Syria-Turkey quake crosses 8700. More than 8,700 people have officially died as a result of a terrible earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Wednesday, and rescuers cautioned that this number would likely rise when more families are found trapped under the rubble.
Many people in Turkey spent a second night sleeping in their cars or on the streets using blankets because they were afraid to enter the structures affected by Monday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake, the deadliest in the country since 1999.
“Where are the tents, where are food trucks?” said Melek, 64, in the southern city of Antakya, adding that she had not seen any rescue teams.
“We haven’t seen any food distribution here unlike previous disasters in our country. We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold here.”
With the scale of the disaster becoming ever more apparent, the death toll – now 6,234 in Turkey – looks likely to keep on rising.
According to the Syrian government, the death toll from the Syria-Turkey quake crosses 8700 and a rescue organisation working in the rebel-held northwest of the country, the death toll in neighbouring Syria, which has already been devastated by 11 years of war increased by more than 2,500 overnight.
Ten provinces in Turkey have been placed under emergency rule by President Tayyip Erdogan. However, locals in several affected Turkish cities have expressed their rage and hopelessness over what they believe to be a slow and insufficient reaction from the authorities.
The initial quake struck just after 4 a.m. on Monday, the dead of night in the dead of winter, giving the sleeping population little chance to react.
Erdogan, facing a tight election in May, is expected to visit some of the affected areas on Wednesday.
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 – broader than that between Boston and Philadelphia, or Amsterdam and Paris.
The earthquake in Turkey and northern Syria caused thousands of buildings, including hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings, to collapse, inflicted tens of thousands of injuries, and rendered untold numbers of people homeless. Hours later, another, the nearly identical earthquake struck the region.
Rescue teams have had difficulty getting to some of the worst-affected communities due to damaged roads, bad weather, a lack of supplies, and a lack of heavy equipment. There are some places without electricity and gasoline.
Aid workers expressed special alarm about the situation in Syria, where there were already more people in need of assistance than at any other time since the conflict broke out and shattered the country, hampering relief efforts.
