Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With the recovery of a stream of bodies from the widespread debris, the death toll in the Monday earthquakes in Turkey, Syria, and adjoining areas has crossed the 11,000 mark as international teams of rescue and relief operators frantically searched for more survivors.
“It is now a race against time,” said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable.”
The WHO officials feared that the death toll could rise inexorably to around 20,000. The global health watchdog warned that up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquakes and urged nations to rush help to the disaster zone.
Quoting officials, the media reported that 8,574 people had died in Turkey and 2,662 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude main tremor, bringing the total to 11,236.
Rescuers in Turkey and Syria battled bitter cold, rains, and snow to find survivors under buildings flattened by at least three powerful earthquakes. A series of tremors inflicted more suffering on a border area, already plagued by years of conflict, which 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. They included that of a newborn baby pulled alive from rubble in Syria, still tied by her umbilical cord to her dead mother. Rescuers, who heard a voice while digging, cleared the dust and found the baby with an intact umbilical cord, which they cut and took the infant to the hospital.
The infant is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest of whom were killed in the rebel-held town of Jindayris, the reports said.
The 7.8-magnitude quake struck Monday as people slept, flattening thousands of structures, trapping an unknown number of people, and potentially impacting millions. This was followed by two more temblors and dozens of aftershocks.
The widespread destruction led Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to declare on Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 southeastern provinces of the country.
Meanwhile, dozens of nations including India, the United States, China, and the Gulf States have either already sent relief and rescue teams and materials or pledged to help, which began arriving by air.
A winter storm compounded the misery by rendering many roads—some of them damaged by the quake—almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams stretching to kilometers in some regions.
The cold rain and snow are a risk both for people forced from their homes—who took refuge in mosques, schools, or even bus shelters—and survivors buried under debris.
The Syrian Red Crescent appealed to the West to lift sanctions and provide aid. Russia-supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international relief efforts.
Washington and the European Commission, which sent relief to Turkey, a NATO ally, said on Monday that their humanitarian programs were responding to the destruction in Syria.
The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO said it was ready to provide assistance after two sites listed on its World Heritage list in Syria and Turkey suffered damage. In addition to the damage to Aleppo’s old city and the fortress in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, UNESCO said, at least three other World Heritage sites could be affected.
Much of the quake-hit area of northern Syria has already been decimated by some 12 years of civil war and aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russian forces that destroyed homes, hospitals, and clinics in rebel-held areas.
Residents in the quake-devastated town of Jandairis in northern Syria used their bare hands and pickaxes to search for survivors.
The Syrian health ministry reported damage across the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, and Tartus, where Russia is leasing a naval facility.
Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo–Syria’s pre-war commercial hub — often collapsed due to the dilapidated infrastructure.
After the earthquake, prisoners mutinied at a jail holding mostly Islamic State (IS) group members in northwestern Syria, with at least 20 of them escaping.
Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones, sitting precariously atop three major faultlines.
The country’s last 7.8-magnitude tremor was in 1939 when 33,000 died in the eastern Erzincan province. The Turkish region of Duzce suffered a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in 1999 when more than 17,000 people died.
Experts have long warned a large quake could also devastate the Turkish capital of Istanbul, a megalopolis of 16 million people filled with rickety homes.