Three British nationals are missing following the devastating earthquake that struck south-eastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, the foreign secretary said this afternoon.
Making a statement in the Commons, James Cleverly said: “As of this morning, we know that three British nationals are missing and the Foreign Office’s Crisis Response Hub is working to support the at least 35 British nationals who have been directly affected by these earthquakes.
“We assess that the likelihood of large-scale British casualties remains low.”
The deadly series of earthquakes and aftershocks has caused widespread devastation between southeast Turkey and northwest Syria and left more than 5,000 dead.
The 7.8 magnitude quake hit Turkish city Gaziantep in the early hours of Monday, and since then an extensive search and rescue operation has been launched to find survivors buried in the rubble of destroyed homes and businesses.
Mr Cleverly told MPs that the Turkish government is requesting international assistance “on a scale that matches the enormity of the situation that they are facing”.
He said:“Across the region inhabited by more than 12 million people, more than 6,000 buildings have collapsed. Electricity and gas infrastructure has been severely damaged.
“Many of the 3.5 million Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey reside in the affected provinces. Turkey’s outstanding disaster relief response capability has been severely tested by the sheer scale of this catastrophe.
“The Turkish government has declared a state of emergency and they are requesting international assistance on a scale that matches the enormity of the situation that they are facing.
“Turkey will lead the disaster relief response in the areas of Syria where it has the presence.”
Among those joining the relief effort are 12 crew members from the London Fire Brigade and 76 search and rescue specialists being sent by the government with state-of-the-art equipment and four specially trained dogs.
It comes as, British Turkish Association spokesman Atilla Ustun, 55, praised communities across London, which he said have helped raise between £200,000 and £300,000, which has paid for 300 boxes of donated aid to be sent on a Turkish Airlines cargo plane from Heathrow.
Dilan Altun, a 22-year-old Turk living in London, said she has tens of relatives who are now homeless and has been told people are dying after being rescued due to sub-zero conditions.
After the rescue mission, providing shelter is aid organisations’ priority, while there is also a need for food, clean water and warm clothes.
James Denselow, UK head of conflict and humanitarian advocacy for Save the Children UK, told the PA news agency: “The scale of this earthquake, in terms of not just strength but the kind of actual absolute sprawl of it has meant that we’ve had to spend a lot of time in this first phase checking in on needs, checking in on what is working logistically, checking that all our people are OK.
“Because you’ve got airports out of action, hospitals collapsed, clinics collapsed, all the sort of places we would normally use are not necessarily accessible.
“All the figures you’re hearing are way off what will be the final figures, and what I’m hearing from staff and colleagues closer to the emergency is that everything we’re seeing in the media is tip-of-the-iceberg stuff.
“So we’re still really just unravelling the fog of this disaster.”
Additional reporting by agencies
