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Turkey and Syria earthquake latest: death toll rises to more than 23,700 – as it happened

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Rescue efforts continue amid growing criticism of UN response in Syria and calls for full humanitarian access

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Fri 10 Feb 2023 17.43 ESTFirst published on Fri 10 Feb 2023 00.36 EST
Rescuers carry a woman named Zeynep to an ambulance after she was found after 104 hours trapped in rubble in Kırıkhan, Turkey.
Rescuers carry a woman named Zeynep to an ambulance after she was found after 104 hours trapped in rubble in Kırıkhan, Turkey. Photograph: Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters
Rescuers carry a woman named Zeynep to an ambulance after she was found after 104 hours trapped in rubble in Kırıkhan, Turkey. Photograph: Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters

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Death rises to 23,700 across Turkey and Syria

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.

Emergency crews have made a series of dramatic rescues in Turkey on Friday, pulling several people from the rubble four days after a catastrophic 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed more than 23,000 in Turkey and Syria.

Temperatures remain below freezing across the large region, and many people have no place to shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but is still struggling to reach many people in need.

Key events
Nicola Slawson
Nicola Slawson

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

Chris Stein
Chris Stein

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:

Death rises to 23,700 across Turkey and Syria

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.

Emergency crews have made a series of dramatic rescues in Turkey on Friday, pulling several people from the rubble four days after a catastrophic 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed more than 23,000 in Turkey and Syria.

Temperatures remain below freezing across the large region, and many people have no place to shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but is still struggling to reach many people in need.

Funeral services have been held in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus for some of the 10 people whose bodies were repatriated from the earthquake-devasted Turkish city of Adiyaman, AP reports.

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said the bodies of seven children who were members of their school’s volleyball team, two teachers and a parent were brought back Friday after being pulled out of the rubble of the collapsed Isias Hotel.

Tatar expressed “heartfelt condolences and sympathies” to the families and friends of the deceased.

A group of 39 people, including members of the girls and boys volleyball teams, were staying in the hotel when it collapsed. Search efforts are continuing to try to locate all of them.

Turkish Cypriot authorities have already sent a team of rescuers including 17 riot police and 10 firefighters to the Kahramanmaraş area. Another 200 rescue workers and eight vehicles are expected to arrive later to Turkey.

The United Nations Security Council 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.

With the death toll in Turkey and Syria passing 23,000, some diplomats expressed frustration on Friday that the 15-member council has been slow to act after Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pressed for more access to northwest Syria via Turkey, Reuters reports.

A UN diplomat familiar with discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity:

There is frustration with foot-dragging on this. The Secretary-General said we need more crossings. The UN Security Council needs to step up and get it done.

Since 2014 the United Nations has been able to deliver aid to millions of people in need in the northwest of war-torn Syria through Turkey under a Security Council mandate. But it is currently restricted to using just one border crossing.

Brazil’s UN Ambassador Ronaldo Costa Filho said UN aid chief Martin Griffiths – who is in Turkey and will also visit Syria – will brief the council next week and that any action by the body will “depend on an evaluation of the concrete situation on the ground, it cannot be a gut reaction to what is in the press.”

Following Guterres’ remarks on Thursday and calls by aid groups, the United States is pushing for the Security Council to adopt another resolution “that would allow for additional border crossings so that the UN can access areas in need,” said a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jon Henley
Jon Henley

A second convoy of aid trucks has crossed into stricken north-western Syria from Turkey, as rescuers continued to pull survivors – including a newborn baby – from the rubble 100 hours after an earthquake that has killed nearly 22,500 people.

Hundreds of thousands more people have been left homeless and short of food in often sub-zero winter conditions after 7.8- and 7.6-magnitude quakes struck within hours of each other on Monday. Dozens of countries have pledged help and sent emergency teams.

In Samandağ in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, a 10-day-old boy named Yagiz was retrieved from a ruined building overnight, while in Kırıkhan, German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman alive out of the rubble more than 104 hours after she was buried and carried her to a waiting ambulance.

“Now I believe in miracles,” Steven Bayer, the International Search and Rescue team leader, said at the site. “You can see the people crying and hugging each other. It’s such a huge relief that this woman under such conditions came out so fit. It’s an absolute miracle.”

Yagiz, a 10-day-old baby who was rescued in the Samandağ district of Turkey’s Hatay province. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A 10-year-old boy was also saved overnight with his mother in the Samandağ district of Hatay after being trapped for more than 90 hours, while in Diyarbakır in the east, 32-year-old Sebahat Varlı and her son, Serhat, were pulled out alive 100 hours after the first quake.

Hopes were fading, however, that many more people would be found alive. Barely 6% of earthquake victims who have not been rescued within five days survive, experts say, compared with 74% after 24 hours. The freezing conditions are likely to significantly reduce survival expectancy.

In the Syrian town of Jindires, a Reuters reporter spoke to Naser al-Wakaa, sobbing as he sat on the pile of rubble and twisted metal that had been his family’s home and burying his face in the baby clothes that had belonged to one of his children.

“Bilal, oh Bilal,” he said, shouting the name of one of his dead children.

Rabie Jundiya, a rescue worker in Jindires, said: “The civil defence teams will not withdraw … until the last corpse is recovered from under the rubble.”

Read more here:

Restaurant owners from across Turkey travelled to Hatay, one of the regions worst-hit by Monday’s devastating earthquake, to dish up kebabs, rice and other hot meals on Friday to disaster survivors, Reuters reports.

Omer Faruk, who runs a restaurant in Konya in central Turkey, travelled to a tent city housing those who had lost their homes. Some 550 white tents have been erected next to Hatay Stadium - usually used for soccer - in the south of the country.

Faruk said:

We are providing food to our citizens who are suffering due to the earthquake. We are all restaurateurs. We are here to help quake victims.

Long lines of residents, including many children, queued up to receive the meals. Volunteer Sardar Kayak said they were providing food for 1,000 people a day at the stadium, as well as another thousand in nearby villages.

With some 6,500 buildings collapsed in Turkey and countless more damaged, hundreds of thousands of people lack safe housing.

Banks of tents have been erected in stadiums and shattered city centres, and Mediterranean and Aegean summer beach resorts outside the quake zone have opened up hotel rooms for evacuees.

Earthquake victims queue up in the tent city set up near Hatay Stadium. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
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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.

Live television footage from the site showed two people being pulled from the rubble by Syrian and Lebanese rescue crews, as bystanders clapped and shouted “God is great,” Reuters reports.

A rescue worker said that two of those rescued were a woman and her child.

More than 3,500 people have been killed by the quake in Syria, according to tallies by state media and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest of the conflict-divided country.

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