Rescuers in Turkey and Syria dug with bare hands through the freezing night Tuesday hunting for survivors among the rubble of thousands of buildings felled in a series of violent earthquakes on Monday. The death toll across the two countries reached 5,102 after a swarm of strong tremors occurred near the Turkey-Syria border – the largest of which measured a massive 7.8 in magnitude.
10:05am: Turkey death toll reaches 3,419
Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay said the total number of deaths in Turkey had risen to 3,419, with another 20,534 people injured. That brought the number of people killed to 5,102, with another 1,602 people confirmed dead on the Syrian side of the border.
9:28am: WHO chief worried about silent areas of Turkey, Syria after quake
The head of the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday the WHO was especially concerned about areas of Turkey and Syria from which no information had emerged following a major earthquake that killed thousands.
“We’re especially concerned about areas where we do not yet have information,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO’s executive board meeting in Geneva. “Damage mapping is one way to understand where we need to focus our attention.”
9:28am: Turkey detains four over quake social media posts
Turkish police on Tuesday said they had detained four people over “provocative” social media posts following the earthquake.
The quake struck the region early on Monday, killing more than 4,800 people in Turkey and Syria, injuring thousands and leaving many more without shelter in the bitter cold.
The four individuals were detained after officers found accounts that shared “provocative posts aiming to create fear and panic”, the police said.
9:14am: Syria death toll reaches 1,602
At least 1,602 people were killed and thousands injured in Syria following a number of deadly earthquakes and aftershocks in neighbouring Turkey, authorities and rescuers said on Tuesday.
State news agency SANA said at least 812 people were killed and 1,449 people injured in the government-held provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Tartous.
At least 790 people were killed in Syria’s opposition-held northwest and 2,200 injured with the toll expected to “rise dramatically,” the White Helmets rescue team said.
9:10am: Ex-Newcastle winger Atsu pulled alive from earthquake rubble
Ghana international winger Christian Atsu has been found alive after being buried under rubble by the earthquake, the vice president of his club Hatayspor told media on Tuesday. He had been reported missing in Turkey’s Hatay province.
“Christian Atsu was pulled out injured. Our sporting director, Taner Savut, is unfortunately still under the rubble,” club vice president Mustafa Ozak told Radyo Gol.
Atsu, 31, played in the Premier League for Newcastle United and Everton, on loan from Chelsea, and joined Hatayspor in September. He was last selected to play for Ghana in 2019, but has not officially retired from international football.
8:43am: New earthquake of magnitude 5.7 strikes eastern Turkey region
An earthquake of magnitude 5.7 struck eastern Turkey on Tuesday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said.
The quake was at a depth of 46 km (28.58 miles), the centre added.
8:40am: Southern Turkey’s Adana becomes ‘hub for rescue teams’
In the southern Turkish city of Adana, about 200 kilometres from the earthquake’s epicentre, “about 10 buildings have collapsed, all of them high-rises, so there are victims here. There are rescue teams here, but it is stable enough and secure enough for the city to have become a hub for rescue teams arriving not only from all around Turkey but also internationally,” FRANCE 24’s Shona Bhattacharyya reports.
8:36am: Death toll rises to 812 in Syrian government-held areas
At least 812 people were killed in government-held areas in Syria following the two deadly earthquakes and a series of aftershocks in neighbouring Turkey, state news agency SANA said on Tuesday.
SANA said at least 1,449 people were injured in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Tartous.
8:36am: Turkey port fire rages following quake
A large fire that broke out at a section of a port in an earthquake-stricken city in southeast Turkey is raging for a second day.
Television images Tuesday showed thick black smoke rising from burning containers at Iskenderun Port on the Mediterranean Sea, in the city of Iskenderun. Reports said the fire was caused by containers that toppled over during the powerful earthquake that struck southeast Turkey on Monday.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said a Turkish Coast Guard vessel was assisting efforts to extinguish the fire.
8:07am: US sends firefighters, engineers, dogs
The US is coordinating immediate assistance to Turkey, including teams to support search and rescue efforts. In California, nearly 100 Los Angeles County firefighters and structural engineers, along with six specially trained dogs, were being sent to Turkey.
8:03am: Turkey’s historic antagonist Greece comes to its aid
Neighbour and historic rival Greece is sending Turkey a team of 21 rescuers, two rescue dogs and a special rescue vehicle, together with a structural engineer, five doctors and seismic planning experts in a military transport plane.
7:58am: Earthquake toll for Turkey rises to 3,381 dead, official says
The death toll in Turkey after a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake rose to 3,381, the country’s relief agency AFAD told AFP on Tuesday.
The new count brings the confirmed death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria to 4,890, after the strongest quake to hit the region in nearly a century
7:19am: At least 20 escape Syria prison holding IS inmates after quake
Prisoners mutinied in a northwestern Syria prison Monday following the earthquake, with at least 20 escaping the jail holding mostly Islamic State group members, a source at the facility told AFP.
The military police prison in the town of Rajo near the Turkish border holds about 2,000 inmates, with about 1,300 of them suspected to be IS group fighters, said the source. The prison also holds fighters from Kurdish-led forces.
>> Prisoners mutiny, escape after quake hits Syria jail holding IS group members
“After the earthquake struck, Rajo was affected and inmates started to mutiny and took control of parts of the prison,” said the official at Rajo jail, which is controlled by pro-Turkish factions. “About 20 prisoners fled […] who are believed to be IS militants.”
4:08am: Death toll from Turkey, Syria earthquakes surpasses 4,000
Turkey’s relief agency AFAD on Tuesday said there were now 2,921 deaths caused by the earthquake in that country alone, bringing the confirmed tally to 4,365. There are fears that toll will rise inexorably, with World Health Organisation officials estimating up to 20,000 may have died.
In Gaziantep, a Turkish city home to countless refugees from Syria’s decade-old civil war, rescuers picking through the rubble screamed, cried and clamoured for safety as another building collapsed nearby without warning. The initial earthquake was so large it was felt as far away as Greenland, and the impact is big enough to have sparked a global response.
In the city of Kahramanmaras in southeastern Turkey, eyewitnesses struggled to comprehend the scale of the disaster.
“We thought it was the apocalypse,” said Melisa Salman, a 23-year-old reporter. “That was the first time we have ever experienced anything like that.”
2:56am: Nearly 8,000 people rescued
More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority.
Strained medical centers quickly filled with injured people, rescue workers said. Some facilities had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organisation.
The earthquake piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade. On the Syrian side, the area is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the civil war.
In the rebel-held enclave, hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, the opposition emergency organisation known as the White Helmets said in a statement. The area is packed with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the war. Many live in buildings that are already wrecked from military bombardments.
Offers of help – from search-and-rescue teams to medical supplies and money – poured in from dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO. The vast majority were for Turkey, with a Russian and even an Israeli promise of help to the Syrian government, but it was not clear if any would go to the devastated rebel-held pocket in the northwest.
Bitterly cold temperatures could reduce the time frame that rescuers have to save trapped survivors, Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University, told AP. The difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war would further complicate rescue efforts, he noted.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
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