Several children were pulled alive from the rubble in Turkey and Syria on Friday, five days after the earthquake that killed more than 23,000 people, prompting the Damascus regime to stop sending international aid to those hit by the rebels controlled territories to accept .
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The same day, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for “an immediate ceasefire” in Syria to ease support for the affected population there.
Because when humanitarian aid flows into Turkey from abroad – Germany announced on Friday that it would send 90 tons of material by plane – access to Syria at war, whose regime is under international sanctions, is more complicated.
Currently, almost all related goods delivered to the rebel areas are transported in small droplets from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, which is currently the only border crossing guaranteed by the United Nations.
“The Council of Ministers has accepted the delivery of humanitarian aid for the entire ‘Syrian territory,’ including areas beyond the control of the state,” announced the Syrian government.
He specified that their distribution should be “supervised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent”, with the support of the UN.
In Damascus, a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sivanka Dhanapala, warned that “up to 5.3 million people in Syria could become homeless because of the earthquake”.
For its part, the World Food Program (WFP), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has requested $77 million to help 874,000 people affected by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
A six year old boy
Thousands of homes are being destroyed on both sides of the border and rescuers are stepping up their efforts to search for survivors even as the crucial first 72-hour window to find survivors has closed.
On Friday, however, a six-year-old boy, Moussa Hmeidi, was rescued alive from the rubble in a town in north-west Syria’s Jandairis, amid jubilation, an AFP journalist noted. He was in shock and was injured in the face.
In southern Turkey, in Antakya, “around the 105th hour” after the earthquake, rescuers pulled an 18-month-old infant, Yusuf Huseyin, alive from the rubble of a building, then twenty minutes later, his brother Muhammed Huseyin told NTV .
Two hours earlier, Zeynep Ela Parlak, a three-year-old girl, had been rescued in the earthquake-damaged city.
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Spanish soldiers also rescued a mother and her two children from the rubble in the Gaziantep region (southeast) on Friday afternoon.
In Nurdagi, in the same province, Zahide Kaya, who is six months pregnant, was pulled out alive after spending about 115 hours under a pile of rubble, according to Anadolu Agency. An hour earlier, their six-year-old daughter, Kubra, had also been rescued.
The situation, aggravated by the freezing cold, is such that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting in the armed struggle against the Turkish army since 1984, decided on Friday “not to carry out any operation until the Turkish state attacks,” underlined Cemil Bayik, a Official quoted by PKK-affiliated agency Firat. “Thousands of our people are still under the rubble. (…) Everyone must mobilize all their resources”.
“Not as fast as expected”
Many survivors criticize the government’s slow response. “On the second day of the earthquake, I didn’t see anyone before 2 p.m.,” accuses Mehmet Yildirim 34 hours after the initial shock. “No state, no police, no soldiers. Shame on you ! You left us alone!”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan outlined a kind of mea culpa on Friday. “The destruction affected so many buildings (…) that unfortunately we could not carry out our interventions as quickly as we had hoped,” he admitted during a visit to Adiyaman, a very southern city affected by the disaster.
In Cyprus on Friday, the first bodies of Turkish Cypriot victims dug up from the rubble after Turkey’s earthquake were returned to the island, including those of seven teenage volleyball players playing in a tournament.
The hotel in which the group (24 young people aged 11 to 14, four of their teachers, one coach and ten of their parents) were staying in Adiyaman collapsed completely. “The bodies of 19 youths (from the group) were found under the rubble,” NTV said.
According to the latest official reports, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by hundreds of tremors killed at least 23,871 people: 20,318 in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria.
The WHO estimates that 23 million people are “potentially exposed, including about five million people at risk” and fears a major health crisis that would do more damage than the earthquake.
Humanitarian organizations are particularly concerned about the spread of cholera, which has resurfaced in Syria.
In addition, the Olympic Movement will release $1 million for emergencies to help athletes, refugees and displaced people in regions in Turkey and Syria hit by Monday’s earthquake, the IOC announced.