Summary
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 21,000.
The combined death toll in Turkey and Syria from Monday’s devastating earthquake rose to at least 21,o00 after officials and medics in Turkey said 17,674 people had died in the country and figures published by the Syrian White Helmets group said 3,377 people had died in Syria.
Aid has been announced for Turkey and Syria. The World Bank will provide $1.78bn to Turkey. Meanwhile the US will send $85m (£70.1m) in aid for Turkey and Syria. Immediate assistance of $780m (£643m) will be offered via Contingent Emergency Response Components from two existing projects in Turkey, said the bank. Countries including France and Germany have also sent money and support, as has Greece, which has had long-term disputes with Turkey.
At least 28,044 people have been evacuated from Kahramanmaraş, one of the southern Turkish provinces hardest hit by Monday’s earthquake, including 23,437 by air and 4,607 by road and rail, Turkey’s disaster management agency said.
Rescuers continued to pull people who have been trapped for days out of the rubble, including a young girl trapped for three days.
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AHAD, said it has recorded almost 650 aftershocks since two earthquakes – 7.8 and 7.6 in magnitude – struck, making rescue efforts even more difficult and dangerous as emergency teams comb through severely weakened buildings.
A Reuters report shed light on how hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the quake are being housed in banks of tents erected in stadiums and shattered city centres, while Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts outside the quake zone are opening up hotel rooms for evacuees.
World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is on his way to Syria, where the WHO is part of the response. The UN will dispatch its aid chief, Martin Griffiths, to Gaziantep, in Turkey, and Aleppo and Damascus, in Syria, this weekend.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has spoken to Turkey’s finance minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, about how the US can provide assistance in Turkey and Syria. US state department spokesperson Ned Price said the US would continue to demand unhindered humanitarian access to Syria and urged Bashar al-Assad’s government to immediately allow aid through all border crossings.
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.
Updated
Death toll rises to more than 21,000
The death toll from Monday’s earthquake on both sides of the border in Turkey and Syria is now more than 21,000.
Officials and medics said 17,674 people had died in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 21,051, Agency France Presse reports.
It comes after the White Helmets said on Twitter, that at least 2,030 people have been killed with more than 2,950 injured. Earlier on Thursday the death toll in the rebel-held area was 1,900.
Associated Press has this heart-rending dispatch about the situation facing orphaned Syrian babies and children whose parents were killed in the earthquake:
A Syrian baby girl whose mother gave birth to her while trapped under the rubble of their home during this week’s devastating earthquake now has a name: Aya, Arabic for “a sign from God.” With her parents and all her siblings killed, her great-uncle will take her in.
Aya is one of untold numbers of orphans left by Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake, which killed more than 20,000 people in northern Syria and southeastern Turkey. The pre-dawn quake brought down thousands of apartment buildings on residents as they were roused from sleep, so entire families often perished.
In most cases, relatives take in orphaned children, doctors and experts say. But those surviving relatives are also dealing with the wreckage of their own lives and families. In the continued chaos days after the quake, with the dead and a dwindling number of survivors still being found, doctors say it’s impossible to say how many children lost their parents.
At one hospital in north-west Syria, a red-haired 7-year-old girl, Jana al-Abdo, asked repeatedly where her parents were after she was brought in, said Dr Khalil Alsfouk, who was treating her. “We later found out she was the only one who survived among her entire family,” he said.
In the case of the newborn Aya, her father’s uncle, Salah al-Badran, will take her in once she is released from the hospital.
But his own house was also destroyed in the north-west Syrian town of Jindires. He and his family managed to escape the one-story building, but now the household of 11 people are living in a tent, he told the Associated Press.
“After the earthquake, there’s no one able to live in his house or building. Only 10% of the buildings here are safe to live in and the rest are unlivable,” he said, communicating via voice messages.
Rescue workers in Jindires discovered Aya on Monday afternoon, more than 10 hours after the quake hit, as they were digging through the wreckage of the five-story apartment building where her parents lived.
Buried under the concrete, the baby was still connected by her umbilical cord to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who was dead, along with her husband and four other children. The baby was rushed to a hospital in the nearby town of Afrin.
Abu Hadiya probably gave birth to the girl and then died a few hours before they were discovered, said Dr Hani Maarouf at Cihan hospital in Afrin.
“We named her Aya, so we could stop calling her a new-born baby,” said Maarouf. Her condition is improving by the day and there was no damage to her spine, as initially feared, he said.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, said it has been monitoring children whose parents are missing or killed, providing food, clothes and medicine and coordinating with hospitals to track down extended family members who might be able to care for them.
In Turkey, the ministry of family and social services appealed to potential foster families to submit applications. It said children whose families or relatives could not be found were currently being taken care of in state institutions. Staff were assessing their needs and placing them with registered foster families, the ministry said.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has spoken to Turkey’s finance minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, about how the US can provide assistance in Turkey and Syria.
US state department spokesperson Ned Price said the US would continue to demand unhindered humanitarian access to Syria and urged Bashar al-Assad’s government to immediately allow aid through all border crossings.
“This was primarily an effort to garner from our Turkish allies what they would like to see from the United States,” Price told reporters, adding that the US expects it will have more to say on aid to Turkey soon.
Çavuşoğlu gave specifics about Turkey’s needs, Price said, according to Reuters. He added that Washington “will do everything we possibly can to fulfil the needs that the Turks have put forward”.
Price said US helicopters were helping rescue personnel reach difficult-to-access areas and said Washington was pre-positioning relief equipment it hoped would join the recovery efforts.
The US is providing a disaster assistance response team of about 200 people, including two urban search and rescue teams.
Paramedics, emergency responders, hazardous material technicians and others had already arrived, Price said.
Washington is also sending concrete breakers, generators, medical supplies, tents, water and water purification systems, he added.
Our reporter Ruth Michaelson has written this from Istanbul, on how the perceived slow response by Turkey has affected the standing of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan:
The gleaming black sedan wound through the epicentre of Turkey’s deadly earthquake in the town of Pazarcık.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s car glistened in the sunlight as the Turkish president passed citizens burning fires to keep warm in the freezing cold among towering piles of rubble that were once their homes.
Erdoğan limited his interactions with the public in Pazarcık, instead driving directly to the local police headquarters to discuss the aftermath of the multiple massive tremors that left a trail of destruction over 10 Turkish provinces and across northern Syria, trapping people underneath collapsed buildings and killing more than 20,000.
When he did stop to speak briefly to the area’s shattered and distraught residents, it was to double down on the notion that the quake was solely responsible for the devastation, rather than poorly constructed buildings linked to corruption, or a rescue response beset by delays.
“What happens, happens, this is part of fate’s plan,” he told one person in Pazarcık, echoing his statements just months earlier after a deadly mining disaster at a state-run coalmine, where the president blamed “fate’s design”, for an explosion that left at least 41 dead.
During a speech in nearby Kahramanmaraş, Erdoğan also lashed out at “provocateurs” who criticised rescue efforts, adding: “Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this.”
Read more:
Updated
World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is on his way to Syria, where the WHO is part of the response.
On my way to #Syria, where @WHO is supporting essential health care in the areas affected by the recent earthquake, building on our long-standing work across the country. pic.twitter.com/VUA6xg0OZW
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) February 9, 2023
World Bank to provide $1.78bn to Turkey for recovery effort
The World Bank announced it will provide Turkey with $1.78bn (£1.47bn) in aid to Turkey to help relief and recovery efforts.
The body’s president David Malpass said: “We are providing immediate assistance and preparing a rapid assessment of the urgent and massive needs on the ground.
“This will identify priority areas for the country’s recovery and reconstruction as we prepare operations to support those needs.”
It comes as Agency France Presse reported on Thursday that the US will provide $85m (£70.1m) in aid for Turkey and Syria.
Immediate assistance of $780m (£643m) will be offered via Contingent Emergency Response Components from two existing projects in Turkey, said the bank.
“The assistance will be used for rebuilding basic infrastructure at the municipal level,” it added.
The @WorldBank is announcing $1.78 billion in support for Türkiye following this week's devastating earthquakes.
— David Malpass (@DavidMalpassWBG) February 9, 2023
We are preparing a rapid assessment of the urgent and massive needs on the ground to identify priority areas for recovery and reconstruction. https://t.co/lb1FkOvGx8
The death toll has risen again in north-west Syria, as the country’s civil defence group – the White Helmets – said that more than 2,000 people have now died in the region.
On Twitter, they said that at least 2,030 people have been killed with more than 2,950 injured. Earlier on Thursday the death toll in the rebel-held area was 1,900.
The number of people killed overall topped 20,000 earlier on Thursday, after updated totals from Turkey’s disaster and emergency body.
Updated
Greece has set aside a historic rivalry to send thousands of tents, beds and blankets to help those left homeless by the earthquake.
The government in Athens plans to provide 80 tonnes of assistance such as blankets, beds, tents and medical supplies, its civil protection ministry said. Commercial flights carrying boxes with part of the aid landed at the Turkish airport of Adana early on Thursday, with the operation expected to conclude by Friday, according to Reuters.
“We have brought medicines, medical supplies and essentials to relieve a bit the pain of quake-afflicted people,” said the Greek civil protection minister, Christos Stylianides, who escorted the aid to Adana. “It’s time we all show our feelings of humanism.”
Greece and Turkey have been at odds for decades over a range of issues, from territorial rights in the Aegean Sea to ethnically-split Cyprus and migration, and tensions had rekindled recently.
However the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, called Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Monday to offer his condolences over the lives lost.
Updated
More than 20,000 people confirmed to have died in earthquake
The death toll from the earthquake has now risen above 20,000, after Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency body published its latest update on the amount of people who have died.
AFAD said the death toll in Turkey is now 17,134, Reuters reports.
It would make an increase from the total announced by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday afternoon, which stood at 16,546.
State media in Syria said the death toll in government-held areas had risen to 1,347, up from 1,262.
Earlier, the White Helmets civil defence group said 1,930 had been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country. It brings the overall total to 20,411.
Experts have said the casualty figures are expected to continue to rise in the coming days.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has visited a donation centre in central London set up by students from University College London’s Turkish society.
He helped pack items, as well as donating hats, scarves and blankets. The items will be sent to Turkey and Syria in the next few days.
Updated
Summary
It’s now 8pm in Turkey and Syria. Here’s the summary of the key developments from the afternoon and early evening:
The combined death toll in Turkey and Syria from Monday’s devastating earthquake rose to at least 19,823, after Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that 16,546 had died, while state media in Syria reported that the death toll in government-held areas had risen to 1,347. Earlier, the White Helmets civil defence group said 1,930 had been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country.
At least 28,044 people have been evacuated from Kahramanmaraş, one of the southern Turkish provinces hardest hit by Monday’s earthquake, including 23,437 by air and 4,607 by road and rail, Turkey’s disaster management agency said.
Rescuers continued to pull people who have been trapped for days out of the rubble, including a young girl trapped for three days.
Turkey announced that it had received pledges of aid from 95 countries and 16 international organisations since Monday, and 6,479 rescue workers from 56 countries were already active in the 10 provinces affected by the quake, with teams from 19 more countries set to be in place within 24 hours.
France announced €12m in emergency post-earthquake aid to Syrians, with the aid to be disbursed “through non-governmental organisations and the UN in all regions affected”, while Germany said it would increase humanitarian assistance in Syria by €26m.
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AHAD, said it has recorded almost 650 aftershocks since two earthquakes – 7.8 and 7.6 in magnitude – struck, making rescue efforts even more difficult and dangerous as emergency teams comb through severely weakened buildings.
A Reuters report shed light on how hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the quake are being housed in banks of tents erected in stadiums and shattered city centres, while Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts outside the quake zone are opening up hotel rooms for evacuees.
The UN will dispatch its aid chief, Martin Griffiths, to Gaziantep, in Turkey, and Aleppo and Damascus, in Syria, this weekend to assess how the UN can best step up support, according to UN secretary-general, António Guterres, who also urged the Syrian government to allow aid-access to the country’s rebel-held north-west.
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.
Thanks for following the blog. I’m handing over to my colleague Harry Taylor who will keep you updated for the next few hours.
Updated
Ukrainian rescue experts involved in the war effort are bringing their skills to the devastation in Turkey to search flattened buildings for survivors, erect tents and offer first aid.
Reuters reports:
Oleksandr Khorunzhyi, a spokesperson for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, said:
There is a war in our country, but we understand that we have to help, and this aid is mutual. There is no other way to do it.
This work goes on constantly, we have prepared people who take part in such operations.
Kyiv has sent 88 people to Turkey to help with the disaster, including specialists in search and rescue operations, doctors, dog handlers and firefighters.
The Ukrainian team built tents near the Turkish city of Antakya close to the Syrian border to provide emergency shelter and set up generators for those left homeless by the earthquake.
Updated
Reuters has a devastating report shedding light on the tragedy that is unfolding in north-west Syria:
Rescuers working by torchlight pulled three-year-old Tariq Haidar from the rubble 42 hours after a devastating earthquake destroyed his family home in the Syrian town of Jandaris.
Orphaned by the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey in the dead of night on Monday, Haidar was brought to a hospital where doctors were forced to amputate his left leg. They are trying to save his right.
Malek Qasida, a nurse caring for him, said:
As soon as he woke up, and saw us in front of him, he asked: ‘Where is Miral?’. We asked: ‘Who is Miral?’. He said: ‘My sister, she was sleeping next to me but she wasn’t answering me’.
They pulled out his father and two of his siblings before him, dead.
There are hundreds of children still under the rubble.
The bodies of his mother and a third sibling were recovered from the rubble later, people in the area said. His removal from the wreckage was the latest in a series of eye-catching rescues caught on camera in the areas in Syria and Turkey hit by the earthquake.
Jandaris was severely damaged by the quake, which has killed at least 1,930 people in rebel-held north-west Syria, according to rescue workers. The Syrian government says the toll in its part of the fractured country is 1,347.
The Syrian civil defence, the rescue service in the north-west, said on Thursday many families remained under the rubble.
Updated
Germany will increase humanitarian assistance in Syria by €26m, according to a statement issued by the country’s embassy in Beirut.
Updated
The UN’s aid chief, Martin Griffiths, will visit Gaziantep, in Turkey, and Aleppo and Damascus, in Syria, this weekend to assess needs and see how the UN can best step up support, according to UN secretary-general, António Guterres.
Guterres also pushed for more aid access to opposition-controlled north-west Syria, saying he would be “very happy” if the UN could use more than one border crossing to deliver help after a deadly earthquake struck the region this week.
He told reporters in New York:
Roads are damaged. People are dying. Now is the time to explore all possible avenues to get aid and personnel into all affected areas. We must put people first.
Updated
Combined death toll nears 20,000
The combined death toll in Turkey and Syria from Monday’s devastating earthquake has risen to 19,823.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that 16,546 had died, after records earlier in the afternoon stood at 16,170.
State media in Syria said the death toll in government-held areas had risen to 1,347, up from 1,262.
Earlier, the White Helmets civil defence group said 1,930 had been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country.
Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
Updated
Banks of tents are being erected in stadiums and shattered city centres to house hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the Turkey-Syria earthquake, while Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts outside the quake zone are opening up hotel rooms for evacuees.
Reuters reports:
With some 6,500 buildings collapsed and countless more damaged, hundreds of thousands of people lack safe housing.
Syrian refugee Bahjat Selo, 62, and his family have camped near their cinderblock, cement and corrugated metal home in Kahramanmaraş since the quake created cracks in its walls.
He said:
It’s too dangerous to be inside. When we go in to get things, we go in like thieves.
We spent four years in a camp – and this is harder. It’s so dark.
At a tent city set up in a stadium in Kahramanmaraş, long lines of bedraggled residents queued up to receive steaming kebabs and dug through bags of donated warm clothing.
The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority calculates that more than 28,000 homeless people have been brought out of the quake zone so far, with nearly 5,000 leaving by road and more than 23,000 by plane.
The Turkish Hoteliers Federation said thousands of rooms had been allocated in resorts such as Antalya, Alanya, Marmaris, Fethiye, Bodrum as well as İzmir and Cappadocia.
Ulkay Atmaca, head of the Professional Hotel Managers’ Association, told reporters that 15,729 people had been accommodated in state guesthouses, student dormitories and hotels, while in Antalya alone, 11,165 evacuees were in hotels.
Updated
Shocking drone footage from the southern Turkish province of Hatay shows the aftermath of the earthquakes which shook the region earlier this week. Buildings can be seen barely standing, where they haven’t been reduced to mounds of rubble, as search-and-rescue operations continue.
Hatay is about 200km south of the epicentre of earthquake, near Pazarcık, and is one of the most badly affected parts of Turkey. Aid and rescuers arrived slowly to the region compared with elsewhere, but efforts to rescue survivors are now fully under way.
Updated
Other organisations which are running appeals that are desperate for extra donations to boost the support they can provide include:
Islamic Relief, which is providing emergency medical assistance, shelter and cash grants in Turkey, and supporting hospitals with medical supplies in Syria, as well as distributing more than 900 mattresses, 2,000 blankets, 72,000kg of heating material and other critical non-food items including tents and sheets.
The Turkish Red Crescent, part of the International Red Cross and the country’s largest humanitarian initiative, is helping with food and shelter.
Médecins Sans Frontières is responding through its teams working in north-west Syria and is working with local partners on the ground.
Unicef has an appeal targeted at helping children affected by the disaster by providing safe water and food, medical supplies, identifying unaccompanied children and reuniting them with their families, emotional support, and supporting children back into the classroom when it is safe.
Norwegian Refugee Council is distributing winter clothes, kitchen sets, basic hygiene items, mattresses and water to families in collective shelters across affected areas in Syria.
Updated
How can you donate to support urgent aid to people in Turkey and Syria?
Funds are urgently needed in Turkey and Syria to support families with medical aid, emergency shelter, food and clean water in freezing, snowy conditions after thousands of buildings and vital public infrastructure have collapsed.
In the UK, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is coordinating a joint rapid response by 14 charities including the British Red Cross, Oxfam and Save the Children.
The UK government has promised to match the first £5m donated by the public.
Funds raised will go towards medical supplies, shelter, food and clean water, as well as blankets, warm clothes and heaters, as humanitarian needs are expected to grow over the coming days.
DEC charities and their local partners are among the first responders, working with locally led relief efforts in Turkey (now known as Türkiye) and Syria.
You can donate to the appeal here.
The DEC says:
£30 could provide blankets for six people to keep them warm
£50 could provide emergency food for two families for 10 days
£100 could provide emergency shelter for four families
Updated
And that’s it from me, Jon Henley. Thanks very much for following today – my colleague Rachel Hall will be picking up the reins for the next few hours.
Questions are starting to be raised – albeit anonymously – by supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about the feasibility of holding elections in Turkey, which are due on 14 May.
Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey with an increasingly iron grip since 2014, faces a tight race and any perception that his government has mishandled the response to the earthquake – as many Turks believe – could dent his chances further.
One official has told Reuters it was too early to make any decision on elections, noting that a three-month state of emergency had been announced and that about 15% of Turkey’s population lived in the areas affected by the earthquake.
“We will look at developments but at the moment there are very serious difficulties in holding an election on 14 May,” the official said.
Updated
Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said the UK would continue to work with the UN and others to support Turkey and Syria after the earthquakes, describing the situation in Syria as “considerably harder”.
“We will continue working with the Turkish authorities to find out what more they need, and we will continue coordinating through the United Nations and the White Helmets civil force in Syria,” he told a news conference in Rome, Reuters reports.
“Of course, the situation in Syria, for obvious reasons, is considerably harder and more complicated, but nevertheless, there are lives that need to be saved,” Cleverly said.
Updated
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AHAD, has recorded almost 650 aftershocks since two earthquakes – 7.8 and 7.6 in magnitude – struck on Monday, making rescue efforts even more difficult and dangerous as emergency teams comb through severely weakened buildings.
Aftershocks are smaller tremors that follow a larger earthquake, as the earth’s displaced crust adjusts after the main shock. They steadily decrease in magnitude and frequency according to a scientifically recognised pattern, but can continue for days or even weeks.
Updated
Death toll in Turkey and Syria surges to more than 19,000
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said the death toll in his country from Monday’s devastating earthquake has now reached 16, 170, bringing the combined total of fatalities in Turkey and Syria to 19,362.
State officials in Syria said earlier on Thursday the death toll in government-controlled areas stands at 1,262, while 1,930 have been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country by the White Helmets civil defence group.
A total of 5,158 people have been reported injured across both government-controlled and rebel-held Syria. Erdoğan said 64,194 people had been reported injured in Turkey.
Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
Updated
Here are some of the latest pictures to reach us from the regions affected by the disaster:
Updated
France has pledged €12m in emergency post-earthquake aid to Syrians, foreign ministry spokesman François Delmas has said, with the aid to be disbursed “through non-governmental organisations and the UN in all regions affected”.
After almost 12 years of war, Syria is divided between multiple regions, variously controlled by the government, which is under heavy western sanctions; jihadists and rebels; and semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities. Many quake victims are living in the last major opposition bastion, Idlib, in the north-west.
Agence France-Presse quoted Delmas as saying the French aid would include €5m for a UN fund providing cross-border aid to northwest Syria, another €5m for “several French and international NGOs working on emergency responses in the health, shelter, water, hygiene and sanitation sectors”, and that the final €2m “under review” was for urgent food aid.
Updated
Death toll in Turkey and Syria rises to at least 17,500
The combined death toll from the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday has climbed to more than 17,500, according to the latest figures from authorities and rescue organisations.
The number of people confirmed dead in Turkey has risen to 14,351, the country’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, said on Thursday, with 63,794 injured.
In Syria, state officials have said the death toll in government-controlled areas stands at 1,262, while 1,930 have been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country by the White Helmets civil defence group.
A total of 5,158 people have been reported injured across both government-controlled and rebel-held Syria. Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
The quake is on track to become Turkey’s deadliest since 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude tremor near the northwestern city of Izmit led to an official death toll of 17,127 – although many sources have said the true figure may have been almost three times higher.
Updated
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), the global aid and relief NGO, which has been working in Syria since 2012, has said that two of its staff in the north-west of the country died as a result of Monday’s earthquake.
“Our colleagues Mohamed Shaabouk and Rowaida Glelate tragically passed away in their respective homes,” the IRC, headed by the former British foreign secretary David Miliband, said in a statement.
“They were committed and passionate individuals and were continuously focused on improving the lives of vulnerable people caught up in the Syrian crisis. The IRC is heartbroken over the loss of our colleagues and will work to support our staff and their families.”
Updated
Turkey has received pledges of aid from 95 countries and 16 international organisations since Monday’s devastating earthquake, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has said.
Çavuşoğlu told a press conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, that 6,479 rescue workers from 56 countries were already active in the 10 provinces affected by the quake, adding that teams from 19 more countries would be in place within 24 hours.
We are now racing against the clock to save lives together.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 8, 2023
Soon we will provide relief aid, together.
Türkiye and Syria can count on the EU.
@SwedishPM and I will host a Donors' Conference early March in Brussels.
Let’s mobilise funds globally for the affected communities.
The 27 EU leaders, gathered in Brussels for a summit, wrote to Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Thursday to express their “full solidarity” and to offer more emergency aid.
“We stand ready to further step up our support in close coordination with the Turkish authorities. Our thoughts will continue to be with you and your people,” they said.
“We are now racing against the clock to save lives together,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, tweeted.
Updated
Syria’s civil defence has raised the death toll in the opposition-held north-west of the country to at least 1,930, with more than 2,950 injured, Reuters reports.
Updated
Young girl trapped for three days pulled from rubble in Antakya
Emergency crews working through the night in the city of Antakya, Turkey, pulled a young girl from the ruins of a building and rescued her father two hours later, the IHA news agency reported.
As they prepared to load the man into an ambulance, rescue crews told him that his daughter was alive and they were taking him to the same field hospital for treatment. “I love you all,” he whispered faintly to the rescue team.
In Diyarbakır, east of Antakya, rescuers freed a woman from a collapsed building in the early hours but found the three people next to her in the rubble dead, the DHA news agency reported.
Tens of thousands of people are thought to have lost their homes. In Antakya, former residents of a collapsed building huddled around an outdoor fire overnight into Thursday, wrapping blankets tightly around themselves to try to stay warm.
Serap Arslan, 45, said many people remained under the rubble of the nearby building, including her mother and brother. She said machinery had only started to move some of the heavy concrete on Wednesday. “We tried to clear the debris on our own, but unfortunately our efforts have been insufficient,” she said.
Selen Ekimen wiped tears from her face with gloved hands as she said her parents and brother were still buried. “There’s been no sound from them for days,” she said. “Nothing.”
You can read more from Peter’s report here.
Updated
At least 28,044 people have been evacuated from Kahramanmaras, one of the southern Turkish provinces hardest hit by Monday’s earthquake, including 23,437 by air and 4,607 by road and rail, Turkey’s disaster management agency has said.
It added that accomodation was being arranged for those affected in cooperation with the relevant provincial authorities.
Updated
News that the first UN aid convoy has crossed the border from Turkey into north-west Syria is promising, but far more will be needed in a region that was in dire humanitarian need before Monday’s earthquake struck.
While up to two more crossings may open if security stays good, the UN has described the Bab al-Hawa border crossing as a lifeline for accessing the rebel-held area of Syria, where an estimated 4 million people, many fleeing the country’s 11-year civil war, were already relying on aid to survive.
“We need lifesaving aid,” the UN’s special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, said. “It’s desperately needed by civilians wherever they are, irrespective of borders and boundaries. We need it urgently through the fastest, most direct and most effective routes. They need more of absolutely everything.”
Rescue workers have said the UN’s efforts are insufficient and what was most in need was heavy equipment for search-and-rescue operations where many people are believed to be still buried under debris.
“The UN are not delivering the aid that we are in most need of to help us save lives, with time running out,” Raed al Saleh, who leads the main volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets, told Reuters.
NGOs and rescue workers have said the rescue operation is relying on simple tools like pickaxes and shovels and old cranes in urban areas where whole neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble.
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Midday summary
It is now 12.30pm in much of continental Europe and 2.30pm in Turkey and Syria. Here is a summary of the day’s main events so far:
The combined death toll from Monday’s quakes has risen to 17, 176 after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the tally in Turkey had climbed to 14,014. A total of 3,162 have been reported dead by Syrian government officials and a rescue group in the rebel-held north-west of the country.
The first aid convoy to reach northwestern Syria since Monday’s devastating earthquake has crossed the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey, with six trucks carrying tents and hygiene products.
The United Nation’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, has said the country, already ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, needs “more of absolutely everything” amid a humanitarian crisis that was already worsening before the quake, adding that emergency aid “must not be politicised”.
Rescue workers in Turkey pulled an injured 60-year-old woman from the rubble of an apartment block in Malatya 77 hours after the first quake, but hopes of finding more survivors in temperatures as low as -5C are fading. Experts say the survival rate of people trapped in rubble is 74% within 24 hours but falls to 22% after 72 hours and 6% by the fifth day.
Access to Twitter has been restored in Turkey after talks between the social media platform and Turkish authorities. A Turkish infrastructure minister said he had reminded Twitter of its responsibility to cooperate on “on disinformation and false reports, [and take] swift action against fake accounts”.
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A selection of the latest images from the devastation in Syria and Turkey this morning.
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Combined death toll in Turkey and Syria passes 17,000
The death toll in Turkey from Monday’s earthquakes has risen to 14,014, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said, with more than 63,000 people injured.
Visiting the quake-hit province of Gaziantep, Erdoğan said more than 6,400 buildings had been destroyed and that Turkey aimed to build new three and four-storey buildings in the region within one year, Reuters reports.
A total of at least 3,162 are confirmed dead in Syria, with government-held areas reporting 1,262 people dead and 1,900 killed in the rebel-controlled northwest, meaning the combined tally in both countries now stands at 17, 176.
Experts have said that it is likely to continue to rise.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has underlined the importance for humanitarian organisations of making sure that people who have survived the quake “continue to survive”.
The WHO’s incident response manager, Robert Holden, told reporters in Geneva many were surviving “out in the open, in worsening and horrific conditions” with severely disrupted water, fuel and electricity supplies:
We are in real danger of seeing a secondary disaster which may cause harm to more people than the initial disaster if we don’t move with the same pace and intensity as we are doing on the search and rescue side. People need the basic elements to survive the next period.
British rescue crews are still finding live victims in “survivable voids” created by the way buildings have collapsed, the head of the UK International Search and Rescue team in Turkey, David O’Neill, has said:
We are still finding live victims. It is surprising, but it’s encouraging the way these buildings have collapsed. The people that were recovered yesterday were very dehydrated, slightly hypothermic because of the extremely cold conditions here. They’re still alive.
O’Neill told Sky News that the fcat that that people were in bed and wrapped in blankets at the time of the first earthquake on Monday has increased their chances of surviving.
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First aid convoy reaches Syria
An aid convoy has reached northwestern Syria, the first since Monday’s devastating earthquake that has killed nearly more than 1,000 people in the the rebel-held area, an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing has told Agence France-Presse.
An AFP correspondent reported seeing six trucks passing through the crossing from Turkey carrying tents and hygiene products. The border official, Mazen Alloush, said the delivery had been expected before Monday’s quake.
The UN had earlier said it had received assurances that the first aid would reach northwestern Syria through the sole authorised crossing from Turkey on Thursday.
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The window to save victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria is “fast running out”, the World Health Organisation’s regional director for Europe has said.
Dr Hans Kluge told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that only 22% of people trapped in rubble survive for 72 hours after an earthquake, and the percentage falls rapidly from then on.
“Every minute counts now because the window to save lives is fast running out,” Kluge said. “Everyone is working flat out to find and rescue any survivors.” The death toll is likely to “go much higher”, he said.
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Relief efforts in Turkey and Syria are being hampered by a “raft of issues”, a former British Army logistics expert has said.
Retired Major General Sir Tim Cross told Sky News: “The sadness of the slow response… You need people on the ground allocating resources, understanding what is needed. You need to clear the roads to get in and out of these areas.
“You need support helicopters to get people away from the danger area and further danger. So there is a whole raft of issues that are going on here.”
He added: “You’ve got the people who are buried but you also have the survivors. Those survivors need to be given shelter, water, food, sanitation, medical support, power – all of those issues that are essentially logistics issues.”
The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo is in southern Turkey with photographer Alessio Mamo:
Yesterday we visited the towns of Pazarcik, the epicentre of the earthquake, and Kahramanmaraş, where hundreds of rescuers continue to work tirelessly in the hope of still finding more survivors.
We could smell corpses as they dug through piles of debris in the centre of the town. Emergency workers there continued to comb the wreckage, often finding only body parts. In front of the buildings, razed to the ground, people offer condolences to the families of the victims, who are sitting in the street around fires.
Their loved ones are still wedged somewhere under the remaining debris. After three days, hopes of finding them alive are fading away.
We visited Kahramanmaraş, #Turkey, where hundreds of rescuers continue to work tirelessly in the hope of finding more survivors. But after 3days, hopes of finding them alive are fading away. #earthquake #Syria pic.twitter.com/UkHKEesYCR
— Lorenzo Tondo (@lorenzo_tondo) February 8, 2023
You can read Lorenzo’s full report here.
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UN calls for urgent aid to Syria
The United Nation’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, has said the country – already ravaged by more than a decade of civil war – urgently needs post-earthquake life-saving aid.
“Syrians need more of absolutely everything,” Pedersen told reporters in Geneva. “The earthquake struck as the humanitarian crisis in north-west Syria was already worsening, with needs at their highest levels since the conflict began.”
Aid was needed “urgently, through the fastest, most direct and most effective routes”, he said. “We have seen some aid, but nowhere near enough … Emergency aid must not be politicised. We must instead focus on what is needed.”
The UN had been assured the first assistance would cross from Turkey into Syria later on Thursday, Pedersen said.
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The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is to visit three more areas in southern Turkey that were badly hit by Monday’s earthquake, the state broadcaster TRT Haber has reported.
Erdoğan will visit the southern cities of Gaziantep, Osmaniye, and Kilis, near the border with Syria, the broadcaster said.
The first convoy of humanitarian assistance for people in northwest Syria since Monday’s devastating earthquake is en route to the southern Turkish border with the hope of crossing on Thursday, two aid sources have told Reuters.
A Turkish official said the Bab al-Hawa border crossing was open for humanitarian aid and authorities will open a few more crossings after two days if security is sound. The convoy reportedly includes at least six trucks of medical and humanitarian aid supplies.
The United Nations has described access to the opposition-controlled area of Syria through Bab al-Hawa as a “lifeline” for some 4 million people who it says rely on humanitarian assistance.
Rescue workers in Turkey have pulled an injured 60-year-old woman, Meral Nakir, from the rubble of an apartment block in the city of Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake struck, the Turkish state broadcaster TRT has reported.
Hopes of finding many more survivors in winter temperatures that have plunged to -5C are fading, however, particularly in north-west Syria where rescue efforts are hampered by the devastation wrought by 11 years of civil war.
“The death toll and injured is expected to rise much higher with many families still under collapsed buildings,” Raed Saleh, head of the rescue service in the north-west, told Reuters on Thursday morning. “No assistance has come yet and we are waiting today to see if any is coming.”
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Combined death toll passes 16,000
The Associated Press has reported that the provisional death toll in Syria – provided by Syrian government officials and a rescue group in the rebel-held north-west of the country – has reached 3,162.
Turkey’s disaster agency said earlier on Thursday that the number of people confirmed dead had climbed to 12,873 overnight. That means the combined tally of fatalities from the quakes in both countries has now reached 16,035.
More than 60,000 people are reported injured in Turkey and more than 5,000 injured in Syria.
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British charities’ experience on the ground will allow them to overcome the difficulties of getting aid to quake victims in Syria, Saleh Saeed, the chief executive of the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), has said.
Northern Syria is controlled by rebel groups and multiple reports suggest aid is flowing less easily into the area than into the south of Turkey, which was also badly affected by the disaster. Saeed told BBC Breakfast:
Indeed Syria is still in a state of conflict, but our members have been working in Syria for 10 years. They have people on the ground, both local staff and volunteers. So despite the challenges of course they are experiencing now because of the damaged roads and immense traffic and so forth, aid is getting through and they are scaling up. The needs in Syria are immense.
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Rescuers are continuing to comb through the rubble of collapsed buildings in Syria and Turkey, but the so-called critical 72-hour window since the earthquake has now passed and the chances of finding people alive are falling fast, experts say.
“The first 72 hours are considered to be critical,” said Steven Godby, a natural hazards expert at Nottingham Trent University, told Sky News. “The survival ratio on average within 24 hours is 74%, after 72 hours it is 22%, and by the fifth day it is 6%.”
In previous quakes people have been recovered alive after 15 days under rubble, but subzero winter temperatures since Monday mean those who survived the initial tremor but are still trapped risk dying from hypothermia, doctors have said.
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Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is launching an appeal to help the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the quakes, with the government pledging to match the first £2m donated by the public.
The collective of 15 UK charities, including Oxfam, ActionAid, Save the Children UK and the British Red Cross, said the funds raised would go towards medical supplies, shelter, food and clean water, as well as blankets, warm clothes and heaters.
The appeal will be broadcast on British TV channels on Thursday evening.
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First aid convoy due in Syria today
The first convoy of humanitarian assistance for north-west Syria, where the impact of 11 years of civil war on healthcare, emergency services and infrastructure is hugely complicating relief efforts, is en route to the southern Turkish border with the hope of crossing into Syria later on Thursday, two aid sources have told Reuters.
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Access to Twitter in Turkey has been restored, Netblocks, which monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said on Thursday after talks between the social media platform and Turkish authorities.
Access had been restricted on several mobile networks on Wednesday, removing a key communication channel for coordinating relief efforts.
Netblocks said the coordinated nature of the block suggested it was on government orders, noting that Turkey has a history of imposing social media restrictions during emergencies.
ℹ️ Update: Metrics confirm access to Twitter is being restored in #Turkey following hours of filtering. The restoration comes after authorities held a meeting with Twitter to "remind Twitter of its obligations" on content takedowns and disinformation.
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) February 9, 2023
📰 https://t.co/CEbfgeBpvz pic.twitter.com/EOI9jFyztS
Opposition figures, academics and activists were sharply critical of the block, which came amid mounting condemnation of the Turkish government’s response to the disaster, seen by many as slow and inadequate.
Turkey’s deputy transport and infrastructure minister, Omer Fatih Sayan, said he had reminded Twitter of its responsibilities as earthquake relief work continues.
“Our demands are clear, strong cooperation on disinformation and false reports, swift action against fake accounts and ... measures against content that could damage public order and security,” Sayan said.
The company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said earlier that it had been informed by the government that full access would be re-enabled shortly.
The body of an Australian man killed in the earthquake has been found in Turkey, Sydney’s Nine News reported.
Can Pahali, also known as John, was on holiday visiting family in the southern province of Hatay when the two quakes struck on Monday.
“I can’t, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” Pahali’s brother Inyas told the station. A relative who flew across from Germany found Pahali’s body among the rubble and retrieved it, Nine News reported.
Pahali is the first Australian to be confirmed dead in the disaster. Three more remain unaccounted for, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said, adding that it was supporting about 50 other Australian nationals and their families in the region.
It said the government was “deeply saddened” by the death.
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Hello, this is Jon Henley taking over from Helen Sullivan – I’ll be bringing you the latest on the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria for most of the European day.
That is it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Jon Henley will take you through developments for the next while.
Some good news: emergency crews working through the night in the city of Antakya were able to pull a young girl from the ruins of a building and also rescued her father alive two hours later, news agency IHA reports.
And in Diyarbakir, east of Antakya, rescuers freed an injured woman from a collapsed building in the early morning hours but found the three people next to her in the rubble dead, the DHA news agency reports.
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While nine out of then people rescued are pulled form the rubble within the first 72 hours, people can survive for longer.
“You see a lot of different scenarios where we’ve had some some really miraculous saves and people have survived under horrible conditions,” Dr. Christopher Colwell, an emergency medicine specialists at the University of California, San Francisco told the AP.
“They tend to be younger people and and have been fortunate enough to find either a pocket in the rubble or some way to access needed elements like air and water.″
After the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, a teenager and his 80-year-old grandmother were found alive after nine days trapped in their flattened home. The year before, a 16-year-old Haitian girl was rescued from earthquake rubble in Port-Au-Prince after 15 days.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and Vice President William Lai will each donate a month’s salary for Turkish earthquake relief efforts, the presidential office said on Thursday, adding to existing aid already sent by the island.
Tsai and Lai, who is widely expected to stand for the presidency in elections due next year, “hope to do their part to help Turkey rebuild its homeland as soon as possible”, the presidential office said in a statement.
Turkey, like most countries, has no diplomatic relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, but the two maintain de facto embassies in each other’s capitals and there are direct flights between Istanbul and Taipei.
Turkey toll rises to 12,873 bringing overall deaths to 15,865
Turkey’s death toll has risen to 12,873 overnight, from 12,391 late on Wednesday, the country’s disaster agency said. The most recent figure from Syria stands at 2,992.
This brings the overall number of dead to 15,865.
As 72-hour ‘rescue window’ passes
More than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued within the first three days, Ilan Kelman, a professor of disasters and health at University College London has told AFP.
It is now just over72 hours since the first earthquake struck Turkey and Syria.
But that number can vary significantly depending on the weather, aftershocks and how quickly rescue teams and equipment can arrive at the scene, all factors which are currently going against efforts in Turkey and Syria.
Over 11,200 people have been killed and thousands more injured after the earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria at 04:17 am (0117 GMT) on Monday.
“Generally, earthquakes do not kill people, collapsing infrastructure kills people,” said Kelman, who has published research on quake rescue responses.
The most pressing factor is getting medical attention to people crushed under collapsed buildings before “their bodies fail” or they bleed out, he said.
Weather is also a key factor, and “it is completely against us” in Turkey and Syria, Kelman said. The quake-hit regions have suffered through freezing temperatures as well as rain and snow since Monday.
“This very sadly means that hypothermia is possible, and people are probably unfortunately perishing due to the weather,” Kelman said.
Those who do manage to survive the cold and their injuries still need food and water. Without water, many people “will start dying at the three, four, five day mark,” Kelman said.
Death toll at least 15,000 as crucial 72 hour window passes
Freezing temperatures deepened the misery Thursday for survivors of a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed at least 15,000 people, as rescuers raced to save countless people still trapped under rubble.
The death toll from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake is expected to rise sharply as rescue efforts near the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives.
Survivors have been left to scramble for food and shelter and in some cases watch helplessly as their relatives called for rescue, and eventually went silent under the debris, AFP reports.
“My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister are in the ruins. They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life,” Semire Coban, a kindergarten teacher, in Turkey’s Hatay told AFP.
“We can’t reach them. We are trying to talk to them, but they are not responding... We are waiting for help. It has been 48 hours now,” she said.
Summary
Hello, my name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest from the harrowing aftermath of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
Rescuers are racing to save countless people from beneath the rubble, working in freezing temperatures. The death toll from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake is expected to rise sharply as rescue efforts pass the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives.
More than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued within the first three days, Ilan Kelman, a professor of disasters and health at University College London, told AFP. It has now been more than 72 hours since the first earthquake struck on Monday.
We’ll have more on these stories shortly. In the meantime, here are the key recent developments:
The number of dead has risen to at least 15,383. Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Turkey and 2,992 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 15,383.
Visiting Kahramanmaraş, which was at the epicentre of the quake, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said “On the first day we experienced some issues, but then on the second day and today the situation is under control”. Erdoğan promised the government aimed to build housing within one year for those left without a home in the 10 provinces affected.
In Syria, more than 298,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Syrian state media reported. The number appeared to be a reference only to the parts of Syria under government control, not those held by other factions in the north-west of the country, which is closer to the epicentre.
The World Health Organization is sending expert teams and special flights with medical supplies to Turkey and Syria, the director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has told a media briefing.
Polish rescuers working in Turkey said they had pulled nine people alive from the rubble so far, including parents with two children and a 13-year-old girl from the ruins in the city of Besni.
Rescue workers and residents erupted in cheers when a family was saved from the rubble of a demolished building in the Syrian village of Bisnia on Wednesday. A man, his son and daughter were pulled out from beneath the rubble where they had been stuck for two days.
Istanbul’s stock exchange operator suspended trading for five days until 15 February and cancelled all trades from Wednesday. Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul suspended trading on its equity and derivatives markets within minutes of opening after market-wide circuit breakers stopped the slide in the main index at 7%. The country’s benchmark index fell as much as 16% from its Friday close before the Wednesday trades were cancelled.
Syria’s government has received help from a host of Arab countries including Egypt and Iraq, as well as from its key ally Russia, which has sent rescue teams and deployed forces already in Syria to join relief work, including in Aleppo.
Syria activated the EU civil protection mechanism, two days after the earthquake, to request further assistance from the 27-country bloc and the eight other nation states that are part of the programme. The European Union mobilised search and rescue teams to help Turkey, while the bloc’s Copernicus satellite system was activated to provide emergency mapping services. At least 19 member countries have offered assistance.
Cold weather continues to affect the region with minimum and maximum temperatures for Kahramanmaraş of -6C and 1C (21-34F), for Gaziantep between -5C and 1C, and Diyarbakır expected to have continued snowfall with temperatures climbing to 2C at most.
