Media reports – February 9, 2023
Turkey and Syria earthquake death toll passes 21,000
The combined death toll in Turkey and Syria from Monday’s devastating earthquake rose to at least 21,000 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.
The death toll from the earthquakes in Türkiye's southeast surpassed 17,600 late Thursday, Daily Sabah quoted Vice President Fuat Oktay as saying.
In a news conference, Oktay said 17,674 people lost their lives in the recent disaster, while 72,879 were injured and 121 citizens were pulled from the rubble alive in the past 24 hours.
He noted that the search and rescue operations in Kilis and Şanlıurfa provinces have been completed, and they are almost complete in Adana, Osmaniye and Diyarbakır provinces.
There is currently 120,340 emergency staff working on the ground, including 6,479 from 75 countries, the vice president said.
The country is observing a seven-day national mourning after the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes.
In Syria, where there have been similar complaints of slow response, at least 3,377 people have died, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue groups.
A crisis on top of a crisis: Voice of America
The Voice of America quoted the U.N. resident coordinator for Syria as saying that 10.9 million people have been affected across the country by the earthquake. Before the quake, there were already 15.3 million in need of humanitarian assistance in the country, due to more than a decade of civil war.
“So, it’s a crisis on top of a crisis,” El-Mostafa Benlamlih told reporters Wednesday at the United Nations in New York during a video briefing from Damascus.
He said in Aleppo alone, they estimate a third of homes have been damaged or destroyed, displacing around 100,000 people.
Humanitarians are coping with a shortage of fuel for their operations, as well as freezing temperatures and damaged roads and infrastructure.
The World Food Program has prepositioned food stocks in the area, which Benlamlih said are enough to feed 100,000 people for one week. The World Health Organization has two planes with medical supplies coming from its hub in Dubai to Damascus. But more supplies need to come in urgently.
The World Food Program appealed Wednesday for $46 million to provide food assistance to a half-million people in Turkey and Syria for the next three to four months.
Additionally, the main road the United Nations uses to get aid from Gaziantep in Turkey to the transshipment point into northwest Syria was damaged in the quake and closed.
“So we couldn’t send any relief items; we were looking for alternative routes,” Muhannad Hadi, U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters from Amman, Jordan. He said they had word Wednesday that the road is opening, and they could start delivering some supplies as early as Thursday.
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