Rescuers pulled a baby and a teenage girl alive from the rubble before dawn on Sunday, almost a week after the powerful quake that killed more than 28,000 people in Turkey and Syria but is “doubling” the number, according to the UN could.
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‘You are a miracle’: In a video shared on Twitter by Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, a 13-year-old girl is pulled from the rubble in Gaziantep, Turkey, well past the 72 hours seen as crucial.
Also in southern Hatay province, a seven-month-old boy, Hamza, was found alive, curled up under a sheet, where he spent more than 140 hours, the IHA news agency reported overnight. A two-year-old girl, Asya, was rescued in the same area.
Rescuers cheering and screaming also pulled a 70-year-old woman alive from the rubble in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, according to video broadcast by public broadcaster TRT Haber, which was operating in the freezing cold. “Is the world there?” she asked when she came out again.
Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency also reported on the rescue of a 35-year-old mother and her six-year-old daughter from a destroyed building in Adiyaman province.
According to the latest official figures, the magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed at least 28,191 people: 24,617 in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria.
Visiting Kahramanmaras in Turkey, UN agency head Martin Griffiths told Sky News the toll will “double or more”.
“We haven’t really started counting the death toll yet,” he said.
“Soon, those responsible for search and rescue will give way to the humanitarian organizations whose job it is to care for the extraordinary number of those affected over the next few months,” Mr Griffiths said in a video posted to his Twitter account, also on Saturday .
In Gaziantep, where around 2,000 people have died, displaced people are lining up in sub-zero temperatures for a hot meal thanks to a wave of solidarity from restaurants across the city.
Burhan Cagdas’ restaurant distributed around 4,000 free meals to survivors.
“Our employees are in an impossible situation,” he explains. They have victims in their own families and their homes have been destroyed.” Burhan Cagdas’ family themselves have been sleeping in cars since Monday.
But the wave of solidarity is only stronger. “We want to help,” he says.
Nearly 32,000 people are being mobilized for search and rescue operations in Turkey, as well as more than 8,000 foreign rescuers, according to Turkey’s agency in charge of natural disasters.
Also, for the first time in 35 years, a border crossing between Turkey and Armenia was opened to allow the arrival of humanitarian aid.
On Saturday, the Austrian army stopped its rescue operations for a few hours, citing “the security situation” on site. A similar decision was made by the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) and a German non-governmental organization specializing in helping victims of natural disasters.
In the afternoon, two Austrian dog handlers were able to resume the search “under the protection of the Turkish army,” according to an army spokesman in Vienna.
The brutal collapse of the buildings, which betrays their poor construction and left their residents practically no chance, angers the country.
Turkish media reported the arrest of a dozen building contractors in the south of the country. Further arrests are expected.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 26 million people in Turkey and Syria may be affected, including “around five million vulnerable people,” and on Saturday launched an urgent appeal to raise $42.8 million.
But when international aid flows to Turkey, access to wartime Syria, whose regime is under international sanctions, proves more complicated.
Visiting earthquake-hit Aleppo in north-west Syria, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “devastated by the conditions survivors are facing – freezing weather and extremely limited access to shelter, food, water, heating and medical supplies.” “.
Humanitarian organizations are particularly concerned about the spread of cholera, which has resurfaced in Syria.
The Syrian government on Friday authorized “the delivery of humanitarian aid to the entire country” – including rebel-held areas – where 5.3 million people are at risk of being left homeless.
Damascus said the distribution of aid “should be overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent,” with support from the UN.
By then, almost all aid to the rebel-held areas had passed in droplets and debris from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, the only one currently guaranteed by the United Nations.