Antakya, Turkey/Jandaris, Syria,
Reuters
Rescue crews saved a 10-day-old baby and his mother trapped in the ruins of a building in Turkey on Friday and dug several people out from other sites as President Tayyip Erdogan said authorities should have reacted faster to this week’s huge earthquake.
The confirmed death toll from the deadliest quake in the region in two decades stood at more than 23,700 across southern Turkey and north-west Syria four days after it hit.
A rescuer holds baby boy Kerem Agirtas, a 20-day-old survivor who was pulled from under the rubble, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Hatay, Turkey, on 8th February, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Kemal Aslan
NEWBORN, TODDLERS SURVIVE DAYS IN RUBBLE, BRINGING JOY AMID EARTHQUAKE TRAGEDY
Crouched under concrete slabs and whispering “inshallah” (God willing), rescuers carefully reached into the rubble, then passed down the line their prize – a 10-day-old newborn who survived four days with his mother in the collapsed building.
His eyes wide open, Turkish baby Yagiz Ulas was wrapped in a shiny thermal blanket and carried to a field medical centre in Samandag, Hatay province, on Friday. Emergency workers also carried his mother, dazed and pale but conscious, on a stretcher, video images from Turkey’s disaster agency showed.
A baby is rescued from the rubble in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Hatay Province, Turkey, on 8th February, 2023 in this screen grab obtained from a handout video. PICTURE: Istanbul Municipality/Handout via Reuters
The rescue of small children has lifted the spirits of weary crews searching for survivors on the fifth day after a major earthquake struck Turkey and neighbouring Syria, killing more than 22,000 people.
At least nine children were rescued on Friday, videos released by disaster services showed, their astonishing survival inspiring search crews who also saved several trapped adults.
The rescuers, including specialist teams from dozens of countries, toiled through the night in the ruins of thousands of wrecked buildings. In freezing temperatures, they regularly called for silence as they listened for any sound of life from mangled concrete mounds.
In the Turkish town of Kahramanmaras, 200 kilometres north of Samandag, orange-clad workers squeezed into an air pocket beneath a fallen building to find a toddler, crying as dust fell into his eyes, before relief settled over him and rescuers gently brushed his face clean, video from the Turkish defence ministry showed.
Further to the east, the fearful face of another boy looked out from a pancaked building, his cries rising above the sound of the drills and grinders trying to free him on Friday morning in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, where the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and aftershocks turned apartment blocks into mounds of rubble and piles of shattered masonry,
After opening a wider hole, workers placed an oxygen mask on his face and carried him to safety. Like baby Yagiz, he was followed by his mother, on a stretcher, 103 hours after the earthquake struck.
In Nurdagi near Iskenderun, a Spanish rescuer said “I got him, I got him, let’s go” as he pulled a whimpering two-year-old boy from a collapsed building.
A human chain of soldiers from the Spanish Military Emergencies Unit (UME) moved the boy, Muslim Saleh, to a heated tent, and minutes later pulled out his six-year-old sister, Elif, and then their mother, all alive and well.
“They did not need much treatment, just love, warmth, water and a little fruit,” Aurelio Soto, a UME spokesman, said.
Across the border in Syria, rescuers from the White Helmets group used bare hands to dig through plaster and cement, the air clouded with thick dust, until reaching the bare foot of a young girl, wearing pink pyjamas now grimy from days trapped, but alive and free at last.
A day earlier in the Syrian city of Azaz, Jomaa Biazid was reunited with his 18-month-old son Ibrahim, who he had not seen since the quake destroyed the family home, killing his wife and daughter.
Rescuers had found the boy in the rubble and taken him to hospital, where a couple posted images of him on social media hoping to track down any relatives.
Standing in tears with scars and blood stains on his face, Biazid looked stunned as his son called out to him “Baba” (“Dad”). He then rushed forward to give the boy a kiss. Biazid said he was still looking for his other son, Mustafa.
– ELAN RODRIGUEZ, Antakya, Turkey/Reuters
Hundreds of thousands more people have been left homeless and short of food in bleak winter conditions and leaders in both countries have faced questions about their response.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first reported trip to affected areas since the quake, visiting a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, state media reported.
His government also approved humanitarian aid deliveries across the frontlines of the country’s 12-year civil war, a move that could speed up the arrival of help for millions of desperate people. The World Food Programme said earlier it was running out of stocks in rebel-held north-west Syria as the state of war complicated relief efforts.
The earthquake, which struck in the early hours of Monday, ranks as the seventh most deadly natural disaster this century, ahead of Japan’s 2011 tremor and tsunami and approaching the 31,000 killed by a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.
Erdogan on Friday visited Turkey’s Adiyaman province, where he acknowledged the government’s response was not as fast as it could have been.
“Although we have the largest search and rescue team in the world right now, it is a reality that search efforts are not as fast as we wanted them to be,” he said.
He also said looting of shops had taken place in some areas.
Erdogan is standing for re-election in a vote scheduled for 14th May and his opponents have seized upon the issue to attack him. The election may now be postponed due to the disaster.
With anger simmering over delays in the delivery of aid and getting the rescue effort underway, the disaster is likely to play into the election, if it goes ahead.
Erdogan, for whom the vote was seen as going to be his toughest challenge in two decades in power even before the earthquake, has called for solidarity and condemned what he has described as “negative campaigns for political interest”.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of Turkey’s main opposition party, criticised the government response.
“The earthquake was huge, but what was much bigger than the earthquake was the lack of coordination, lack of planning and incompetence,” Kilicdaroglu said in a statement.
The death toll from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and several powerful aftershocks across both countries has surpassed the more than 17,000 killed in 1999 when a similarly powerful earthquake hit northwest Turkey.
The number of deaths in Turkey rose to 20,213 on Friday, the country’s health minister said. In Syria, more than 3,500 have been killed. Many more people remain under rubble.
Hope amid the ruins
Rescuers, including teams from dozens of countries, toiled night and day in the ruins of thousands of wrecked buildings to find buried survivors. In freezing temperatures, they regularly called for silence as they listened for any sound of life from mangled concrete mounds.
In the Samandag district of Turkey, rescuers crouched under concrete slabs and whispering “Inshallah” [God willing], carefully reached into the rubble and picked out a 10-day-old newborn.
His eyes wide open, baby Yagiz Ulas was wrapped in a thermal blanket and carried to a field hospital. Emergency workers also took away his mother, dazed and pale but conscious on a stretcher, video images showed.
A view of the damage as the search for survivors continues, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on 10th February, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Stoyan Nenov
In Diyarbakir to the east, Sebahat Varli, 32, and her son Serhat were rescued and taken to hospital on Friday morning, 100 hours after the quake. A mother and her two daughters were rescued from the rubble of an apartment block in the city of Kahramanmaras on Friday evening. Broadcaster CNN Turk showed rescue workers carrying out the three of them in succession.
Across the border in Syria, rescuers from the White Helmets group used their hands to dig though plaster and cement until reaching the bare foot of a young girl, still wearing pink pyjamas, grimy but alive and free.
But hopes were fading that many more would be found alive.
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In the Syrian town of Jandaris, Naser al-Wakaa sobbed as he sat on the pile of rubble and twisted metal that had been his family’s home, burying his face in the baby clothes that had belonged to one of his children.
“Bilal, oh Bilal,” he wailed, shouting the name of one of his dead children.
The head of Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation, Bulent Yildirim, went to Syria to see the impact there. “It was as if a missile has been dropped on every single building,” he said.
Some 24.4 million people in Syria and Turkey have been affected, according to Turkish officials and the United Nations, in an area spanning roughly 450 kilometres from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. In Syria, people were killed as far south as Hama, 250 kilometres from the epicentre.
A general view shows mass graves for the casualties, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake, in rebel-held town of Jandaris, Syria, on 10th February, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Mahmoud Hassano
Many people have set up shelters in supermarket car parks, mosques, roadsides or amid the ruins. Survivors are often desperate for food, water and heat.
In Syria, the aid deliveries across the frontlines agreed on Friday will take place in cooperation with the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, state media said.
The United Nations had pushed for aid to flow more freely into Syria, especially into the north-west, where it estimated more than four million people were already in need before the quake.
Dozens of planeloads of aid have arrived in areas held by Assad’s government since Monday but little has reached the north-west.
– Additional reporting by UMIT BEKTAS in Antakya, ORHAN COSKUN in Ankara, ECE TOKSABAY and HUSEYIN HAYATSEVER in Adana, JONATHAN SPICER, DAREN BUTLER, YESIM DIKMEN and ALI KUCUKGOCMEN in Istanbul.
