Rescuers in Türkiye and Syria battled frigid cold Tuesday in a race against time to find survivors under buildings flattened by a earthquake that killed more than 6,200 people. Tremors that inflicted more suffering on a border area, already plagued by conflict, left people on the streets burning debris to try to stay warm as international aid began to arrive.
But some extraordinary survival tales have emerged, including a newborn baby pulled alive from rubble in Syria, still tied by her umbilical cord to her mother who died in Monday’s quake. We heard a voice while we were digging,” Khalil al-Suwadi, a relative, told AFP. We cleared the dust and found the baby with the umbilical cord (intact) so we cut it and my cousin took her to hospital.”
The infant is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest of whom were killed in the rebel-held town of Jindayris. Whole rows of buildings collapsed, leaving some of the heaviest devastations near the quake’s epicentre between the Turkish cities of Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras. The destruction led to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declaring Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 southeastern provinces.
Dozens of nations like the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have begun to arrive by airplane. Yet people in some of the hardest-hit areas said they felt like they had been left to fend for themselves.
“I can’t get my brother back from the ruins. I can’t get my nephew back. Look around here. There is no state official here, for God’s sake,” said Ali Sagiroglu in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras. For two days we haven’t seen the state around here… Children are freezing from the cold,” he added.
A winter storm has compounded the misery by rendering many roads — some of them damaged by the quake — almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams that stretch for kilometres in some regions.
“It is now a race against time,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable,” he added.
The latest toll showed 4,544 people killed in Türkiye and 1,712 in Syria, for a combined total of 6,256 fatalities. There are fears that the toll will rise inexorably, with WHO officials estimating up to 20,000 may have died.
WHO warned that up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquake and urged nations to rush help to the disaster zone.
The Syrian Red Crescent appealed to Western countries to lift sanctions and provide aid as President Bashar al-Assad’s government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international relief efforts. Washington and the European Commission said on Monday that humanitarian programmes supported by them were responding to the destruction in Syria.
The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO also said it was ready to provide assistance after two sites listed on its World Heritage list in Syria and Turkey sustained damage.
Source: eNCA
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