The United Nations says that the damage caused by the earthquake in Turkey will exceed 100 billion dollars News of the earthquake Turkey and Syria

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A UN official says recovery costs will “clearly exceed this amount” after the “horrific” devastation last month.

An official at the United Nations Development Program said that the damages from the devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey last month will exceed $100 billion, ahead of the main donor conference next week.

“It is clear from the calculations made so far that the damage figure provided by the government and supported by … international partners will be more than $100 billion,” Louisa Fenton of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) told a news conference on Tuesday via video link from Gaziantep. . A Turkish city was severely damaged by earthquakes.

More than 52,000 people were killed in southern Turkey and northwest Syria in the February 6 earthquake. Many were crushed or buried in their sleep.

The provisional damage figure, which Fenton said only covered Turkey, is being used as the basis for a March 16 donor conference in Brussels to raise funds for survivors and reconstruction.

The World Bank earlier estimated direct damage in Turkey at $34.2 billion, but said recovery and reconstruction costs would be much higher and losses in Turkey’s GDP linked to the economic turmoil caused by the earthquakes would also add to the cost.

“End of the World” scenes

Fenton said the Turkish government, with support from the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the European Union, has calculated much larger losses.

Once this estimate is complete, she said, it will become the basis for next week’s donor conference for recovery and reconstruction.

It said recovery costs, including building improved and more environmentally sustainable infrastructure, would “clearly exceed this amount”.

Describing the scenes of Turkey’s hardest-hit Hatay province as “horrific,” Fenton said hundreds of thousands of homes had been destroyed. “The needs are huge, but the resources are scarce,” she said.

About two million survivors have been housed in temporary housing or evacuated from the quake-devastated area, according to Turkish government figures.

About 1.5 million people live in tents while another 46,000 have been moved into container homes. Others are living in dormitories and guesthouses, the government said.

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