Government says ending Turkey earthquake rescue operations | Turkey and Syria earthquake news

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Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said search and rescue operations have ended in most provinces nearly two weeks after the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria this month.

“The death toll from the earthquakes has risen to 40,642, and search and rescue work has ended for people trapped under rubble in most provinces,” Yunus Cesar, head of the Disaster and Emergency Management Department, said in a statement on Saturday.

He added: “We believe that we will finish the search and rescue operations by tomorrow night.”

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and neighboring Syria on February 6, killing more than 45,000 people and displacing more than a million people along with an economic cost expected to run into billions of dollars.

People warm near a fire as they take a break from work clearing the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras on February 18, 2023. [Bulent Kilic/AFP]

We are facing perhaps the biggest disaster we have faced in history. Cesar said that the damages caused by the earthquakes and aftershocks – which exceeded 5,700 – were not limited to only the 11 affected provinces.

In Syria, more than 5,800 deaths have been reported, most of them in the northwest. The number has not changed for several days.

The World Health Organization estimates that around 26 million people in both Turkey and Syria need humanitarian assistance.

Another “miracle” rescue

12 days after the earthquake, rescue workers from Kyrgyzstan rescued several members of a Syrian family of five on Saturday from the rubble of a building in Antakya in southern Turkey.

Three people, including a child, were rescued. The rescue team said the mother and father survived, but the baby later died of dehydration. An older sister and twins who did not have children.

We heard screams when we were digging today an hour ago. “When we find people alive, we always feel happy,” Atai Usmanov, one of the members of the rescue team, told the Reuters news agency.

Ten ambulances waited on a nearby street that was closed off to traffic to allow rescue work.

The workers asked for complete silence and for everyone to crouch or sit while the teams climbed over the rubble of the building where the family was found to listen for any further sounds using an electronic detector.

Teams have been finding survivors all week despite being stuck for a long time under rubble in freezing weather, but their numbers have dropped to just a handful in the past few days.

Reporting from Ankara, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Kosiyoglu said many survivors hoped the search and rescue operations would continue for a longer period.

Some people never heard anything from their relatives. They don’t know if they are alive or dead, or in the hospital. “They have no information,” she added.

Aid bottlenecks and health concerns

Damage is severe on both sides of the border, and health officials fear the potential for infection to spread as a result of damage to sanitation infrastructure and a lack of clean water in many affected communities.

Late last year, a declared cholera outbreak in Syria began sweeping the northwest, and aid groups and health experts warned that damage from earthquakes would exacerbate the situation.

There are health concerns on the Turkish side as well, with doctors on the ground citing a lack of sanitation and potable water and overcrowded shelters as risks that could lead to the spread of disease.

People line up for humanitarian aid, following the deadly earthquake, in Kahramanmaras, Turkey [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]

Northwestern Syria waited three long days after the earthquake before aid convoys could navigate damaged Turkish roads and pass through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, the only UN-approved land crossing into this opposition-held area where a number of groups have been active. The armed forces are at war with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Since then, the UN has apologized for the delay and started using two more land crossings from Turkey into northern Syria.

However, there appeared to be other obstacles, as the WFP said authorities in the northwest were blocking access to the area.

“This is hindering our operations. This must be fixed immediately,” WFP Director David Beasley told Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

Sources familiar with the plan told Reuters that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is expected to travel to Turkey and meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Since the earthquake, the United States has sent a search and rescue team to Turkey, provided medical supplies, concrete crushing machinery, and an additional $85 million in funding in humanitarian aid that also covers Syria.

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