KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey: Two more people were found alive under the rubble in Turkey on Friday, 11 days after an earthquake that killed more than 43,000 people in Turkey and Syria. Aid groups are working harder to help the millions of people who have lost their homes.
14-year-old Osman Halebiye was saved overnight in the city of Antakya in the southeast of Turkey, 260 hours after the big earthquake that hit in the middle of the night on February 6. He is in the hospital getting care.
Mustafa Avci, who was 34 years old, was also found alive 261 hours after the earthquake in Antakya. As he was being carried away on a stretcher, his parents showed him his new baby on a video call.
“I had given up on everything. This really is a miracle. They gave me back my son. When I saw the wreckage, I thought there was no way anyone could be saved from there. We were ready for the worst to happen “Ali Avci said, “His father said.”
But these kinds of rescues are happening less and less since Turkey’s most deadly earthquake in modern times, which was a 7.8 magnitude quake followed by another one of the same strength an hour later. Officials say that 38,044 people have died in Turkey so far.
More than 5,800 people have died in neighbouring Syria, which has been in a civil war for more than a decade. The price has been the same for days.
Most of the deaths in Syria have happened in the northwest, which is controlled by insurgents at war with President Bashar al-Assad. This war has made it harder to help people who were hurt by the earthquake.
Overnight, the two sides fought for the first time since the disaster. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that government forces shelled the outskirts of Atareb, a rebel-held town that was badly damaged by the earthquake.
The report could not be checked by Reuters on its own.
After the earthquake, neither Turkey nor Syria has said how many people are still missing.
Families who still have loved ones in Turkey are getting more and more angry about what they see as corrupt building practises and deeply flawed urban planning that led to the destruction of thousands of homes and businesses.
Turkey has said that it will look into anyone who might be to blame for the collapse of buildings, and it has ordered the arrest of more than 100 suspects, including developers.
SCALING UP AID
On Thursday, the UN asked for more than $1 billion to help the Turkish relief effort. This came just two days after the UN asked for $400 million to help Syrians.
People in the huge disaster zone have been sleeping in tents, mosques, schools, and even cars in the freezing winter weather.
The World Health Organization is especially worried about the people in Syria’s northwest, which is where most of the deaths have been reported.
NGOs did a survey and found that about 50,000 households in the northwest need tents or emergency shelter. As help has gone to other parts of the disaster zone, many people in the area have felt like they have been left alone.
Immediately after the earthquake, a route used by the United Nations to send supplies into the rebel-held area from Turkey was temporarily blocked. This cut off all supplies from Turkey.
This week, Assad said that two more crossings into the northwest could be used.
A spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters that 142 trucks of U.N. aid had crossed into the northwest since aid operations started up again on February 9.
“We are definitely expanding the cross-border aid operation. There is a plan for more trucks to come every day,” the spokesperson said.
In his first televised comments since the earthquake, Assad said on Thursday that the government didn’t have enough money to deal with the disaster.
