As the time approaches 2am in Turkey and Syria, here is a round-up of today’s news after Monday’s earthquake, as the death toll has passed 23,000.
The latest report of the death toll in Turkey has risen to to more than 23,000. The confirmed death toll from the deadliest quake in the region in two decades stood at more than 23,700 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria four days after it hit.
Three people were rescued from the rubble of a building in the Syrian city of Jableh, state media reported, around 110 hours after a deadly earthquake struck the region on Monday.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the Turkish authorities’ response to earthquakes in the country’s south was not moving as fast as the government wanted.
The head of the Syrian White Helmets accused the UN of failing to deliver appropriate humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas of the country, describing its response to far as “catastrophic” and calling on it to “apologise to the Syrian people for the lack of help it provided”.
The United Nations Security Council has said it will next week discuss if it will allow the UN to deliver aid to rebel-held northwest Syria through more than one Turkish border crossing following Monday’s devastating earthquake – a move Russia does not think is needed.
The Syrian government has approved humanitarian aid delivery across the frontlines of the country’s 12-year civil war, state media said on Friday, adding aid would arrive with those who needed it with the help of the UN, the Syrian Red Crescent and the international Red Cross.
The US has temporarily eased its sanctions on Syria in a bid to speed up aid deliveries to the country’s north-west, where almost no humanitarian assistance has arrived despite the deaths of thousands in this week’s earthquake.
Turkey’s maritime authority said a fire at Turkey’s Iskenderun port had been extinguished and maritime operations had resumed in the region.
If you would like to donate in support of the rescue effort, lots of charities are desperately seeking extra funds to provide urgently needed medical and humanitarian assistance in Turkey and Syria. You can find out how to donate to the Disasters Emergency Committee – coordinating the response on behalf of 14 UK charities – here, or another list of charities accepting donations is here.
That’s all for today. Thank you for following along. You can read the rest of our coverage of the earthquake here.
US announces 180-day exemption to Syria sanctions for disaster aid
The US has temporarily eased its sanctions on Syria in a bid to speed up aid deliveries to the country’s north-west, where almost no humanitarian assistance has arrived despite the deaths of thousands in this week’s earthquake.
The tremor that has killed nearly 23,000 people there and in neighboring Turkey added to the devastation suffered in Syria’s north, which was already badly damaged by the civil war and is now mostly under opposition control, with Bashar al-Assad’s government present only in some areas.
The US Treasury late on Thursday announced a 180-day exemption to its sanctions on Syria for “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts”. But analysts say the demands of the Assad government and the effects of the war are the main factors complicating aid deliveries into the already tense north-west, and the US move is more about reassuring banks and other institutions that they won’t be punished for rendering assistance.
Delaney Simon, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group’s US program said:
I don’t think that this license will suddenly open the floodgates and allow for unhindered humanitarian access and delivery in Syria.
There are just too many other access issues. But I hope that the license will ease the concerns of financial providers, the private sector and other actors, to show them that sanctions won’t be a risk for them to engage in Syria.
Syria has been under US sanctions since 1979, when Washington designated it a state sponsor of terrorism. The White House tightened the restrictions further amid the Iraq war in 2004 and repeatedly once civil war broke out in 2011, which led to a collapse in relations between Syria’s government and the west.
One of the most forceful salvos came in 2019, when Congress approved what became known as the Caesar sanctions, named for the pseudonym adopted by a Syrian military photographer who smuggled out photos documenting extensive torture in Assad’s prisons. The legislation aims to penalize the Syrian president’s backers in finance and politics abroad who have helped him stay in power ever since the first uprisings.
In announcing the license that grants a temporary reprieve from the regime, deputy Treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo said:
I want to make very clear that US sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people. While US sanctions programs already contain robust exemptions for humanitarian efforts, today Treasury is issuing a blanket general license to authorize earthquake relief efforts so that those providing assistance can focus on what’s needed most: saving lives and rebuilding.
In Turkey, which has suffered the brunt of the deaths from the tremor, local rescuers working in earthquake-ravaged towns and cities have been joined by volunteers from around the world and bolstered by international aid shipments. But in Syria, where the United Nations serves as a lifeline for 4.1 million people in the north-west, only two of its aid convoys have made it through the sole border crossing with Turkey since the tremor occurred – one of which was organized before the disaster.
Read the full story here:
