Kahramanmaras / Antakya, Feb. 16 (BNA): A teenage girl was pulled alive from under the rubble in Turkey, today, Thursday, more than 10 days after an earthquake that killed more than 42,000 people in the country and neighboring Syria, with the families of those still continuing. Missing people await news of their fate.
The 17-year-old was rescued in Kahramanmaras province, in southeastern Turkey, 248 hours after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in the dead of night on February 6, broadcaster TRT Haber reported.
Video footage showed him being taken on a stretcher to an ambulance covered in a gold-colored thermal sheet, according to Reuters.
Authorities said the death toll from the deadliest earthquake in Turkey’s recent history has risen to 36,187.
In Syria, where the earthquake has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis caused by 12 years of war, the reported death toll is 5,800 – a figure that hasn’t changed much in days.
While several people were found alive in Turkey on Wednesday, reports of such rescues are becoming increasingly rare. The authorities in Turkey and Syria have not announced how many people are still missing.
Millions of people are in need of humanitarian aid after being left homeless in the near freezing temperatures of the winter.
In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, a photo of two missing boys has been attached to a tree near the apartment building where they lived.
“Their parents are dead,” said earthquake survivor Bayram Nakar, who stood waiting with other local men in masks as an excavator removed a huge pile of crushed concrete and twisted metal rods behind the tree.
He said the bodies of the boys’ parents were still under the rubble. “The father’s name was Atilla Sarıldız. His body has not been found yet. We hope to find the parents after the excavators remove the rubble.”
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said more than 4,300 aftershocks have hit the disaster area since the start.
aid transfers
The Syrian government announced that the death toll in the territory it controls had reached 1,414, saying this was the final toll.
The bulk of Syria’s deaths have occurred in the rebel-held northwest, but rescuers say no one has been found alive there since February 9 and the focus has shifted to helping survivors.
With much of the area’s sanitation infrastructure damaged or broken, health authorities face the daunting task of trying to ensure people now remain disease-free.
Relief efforts in the northwest have been hampered by conflict, and many people there feel abandoned as aid is channeled into other parts of the sprawling disaster zone.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday it was particularly concerned about the well-being of people in the northwest, where some 4 million people were already dependent on humanitarian aid before the quake.
Aid shipments from Turkey were completely cut off in the immediate aftermath of the quake, when a road used by the United Nations was temporarily closed.
Earlier this week, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to open two more crossings to help – more than a week after the earthquake. The World Health Organization has asked him to agree to open more access points.
As of Thursday, 119 UN trucks have passed through the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam crossings since the earthquake, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters.
The aid consists of food, essential medicines, tents and other shelter items and cholera screening kits, given that the region is still experiencing an outbreak of cholera.
Britain said on Wednesday it would issue two new licenses to facilitate the work of aid agencies assisting earthquake relief efforts in Syria without violating sanctions targeting Assad’s government and its backers.