Turkey and Syria: quake death toll continues to rise alarmingly

The human drama continues to unfold in Turkey and Syria. The death toll from the powerful earthquake and its aftershocks that struck the Turkish-Syrian border area now exceeds 9,600. On the Ottoman side just over 7,000 people have died and on the Syrian side just over 2,000 people have already been found dead in the rubble after the terrifying earthquakes in the region.  

The main focus of the quake was early on Monday in a strip between the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Hama and the Turkish enclave of Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometres northeast of Syria, causing widespread destruction. The strong quake, one of the strongest in the region in more than 100 years, was recorded 23 kilometres (14.2 miles) east of Nurdagi in Turkey's Gaziantep province at a depth of 24.1 kilometres (14.9 miles), the US Geological Survey confirmed. The main quake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and was followed by several aftershocks that reached 7.0, exceeded 6.0 and others that also exceeded 5.0 on the same scale. The devastating power was very great and more than 3,000 buildings collapsed, with thousands more suffering varying degrees of damage. The situation has so far left more than 9,600 people dead between the two countries and more than 42,000 injured, according to official figures. Of the number of injured, just over 38,000 are in Turkey and more than 4,000 in Syria.  

Alongside the affected buildings, many basic infrastructures and services have been destroyed, making survival and assistance difficult for rescue teams, who are also severely affected by the current low temperatures. Despite the adverse conditions, rescue teams have been able to rescue some 8,000 people alive in Turkey. In Syria, meanwhile, figures are more difficult to collate because of the difficult situation in the country, which has been in a bloody civil war since 2011, pitting the government of Bashar al-Assad against opposition forces and rebel groups.  

In several affected areas of Turkey, residents complain of a lack of resources and that they cannot return to their homes for fear of further landslides and because services such as water, electricity and heating have stopped working.  

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that 13 of the country's 85 million people were affected and declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. 

“We have decided to declare state of emergency in order for search and rescue operations to be carried out rapidly” https://t.co/iM0HFtkuFr pic.twitter.com/UV5NMCujr1

— Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye (@trpresidency) February 7, 2023

Despite the tragedy, there are hopeful cases such as that of three-year-old Arif Kaan, who almost two days after the quake struck, was rescued alive from under the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a Turkish town near the epicentre of the quake. The boy's father, who had been rescued earlier, cried as his son was pulled out and loaded into an ambulance, as reported by Arab News.

So far, 435 smaller aftershocks have been reported in the affected areas where more than 60,000 people are working on rescue and debris removal efforts. 

In Syria, meanwhile, the death toll from the earthquakes rose to 2,092 on Wednesday and the number of injured now stands at 4,049, while hundreds of people remain trapped in the ruins, as reported by the EFE news agency. The opposition-held northwestern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, which border Turkey, have the highest number of casualties, with 1,280 dead and more than 2,600 injured, according to the latest tally provided by the White Helmets rescue group on its Twitter account. The death toll is expected to continue to rise with hundreds of families trapped in the collapsed buildings.  

The official Syrian news agency SANA yesterday put the latest death toll at 812 and the number of injured at 1,449 for areas under the control of Bashar al-Assad's government. Emergency teams continue to search for the missing, while planes with international aid continue to arrive at airports controlled by the Syrian government, which is receiving support in the face of this tragedy from various Arab countries and Russia, an ally of the regime in the civil war.  

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has received promises of aid and calls for solidarity from the leaders of these nations and other countries with which diplomatic contacts have ceased due to the regime's brutal repression of opposition groups, as reported by the EFE news agency. 

Bashar al-Assad's Syria is also under international sanctions, particularly by the United States, due to the repression during the civil war, which has isolated the Syrian regime in recent years. Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad called for the lifting of these measures in order to increase the flow of humanitarian aid. All this in the face of allegations that the necessary aid is not reaching Syria.  

Many countries have already announced that they are sending aid to Turkey and Syria. Nations such as the United States, Israel, Germany, Spain, Israel or entities such as the European Union reported sending aid to those affected.

The problem is currently worsening with Syrian refugees affected by the war. Turkey is hosting millions of refugees from the conflict, while in Syria, in the opposition-controlled enclave fighting Al-Assad, millions of people were already dependent on humanitarian aid and the devastation of the earthquake has made their plight even worse.  

As many as 23 million people could be affected in the quake-stricken region, as the World Health Organisation has highlighted, calling the tragedy a "crisis on top of multiple crises".