Turkey-Syria earthquake updates: Syrian gov’t approves NW aid

The UN Security Council next week is to discuss if it will allow the UN to deliver earthquake aid to rebel-held northwestern Syria through more than one Turkish border crossing, a move veto-wielding Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, does not think is needed.

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

“There is frustration with foot-dragging on this,” a UN diplomat familiar with the discussions said on the condition of anonymity. “The secretary general said we need more crossings. The UN Security Council needs to step up and get it done.”

Restaurant owners from across Turkey have travelled to Hatay, one of the regions worst-hit by Monday’s earthquakes, to dish up kebabs, rice and other hot meals to survivors.

Omer Faruk, who runs a restaurant in Konya in central Turkey, travelled to a tent city housing those who had lost their homes. About 550 white tents have been erected next to Hatay Stadium, which is usually used for football.

“We are providing food to our citizens who are suffering due to the earthquake,” Faruk said. “We are all restaurateurs. We are here to help quake victims.”

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

Turkey’s disaster management authority says the country’s death toll from Monday’s earthquakes has risen to 20,213 while 77,711 people have been injured.

At least 2,166 people were killed in opposition-held northwest Syria by the major earthquake, Syrian White Helmets have said.

The toll in the government-held areas also has risen to 1,387 deaths and 2,326 injured, the state media reported on Thursday citing Syria’s health ministry.

This brings the total death toll in Syria to 3,553.

Up to 5.3 million people in Syria may have been made homeless by the devastating earthquake which rocked the region this week, a United Nations official has said.

“As many as 5.3 million people in Syria may have been left homeless by the earthquake,” the Syria representative of the UN high commissioner for refugees, Sivanka Dhanapala, told a news briefing.

He said the UN estimated that 5.37 million people affected by the quake will need shelter assistance across the country.

“That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement,” he said.

“For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis. We’ve had economic shocks, COVID and are now in the depths of winter.”

Three people were rescued from the rubble of a building in the Syrian city of Jableh, state media reported, about 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.”

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

Turkish police have detained a contractor trying to flee the country after his building collapsed in Turkey’s catastrophic earthquake, state media reported.

The quake levelled thousands of buildings and has sparked outrage from victims and people across Turkey over the poor quality of housing.

Ronesans Residence, a block of high-rise luxury flats that toppled over in Antakya city, Hatay province, has sparked anger on social media.

The 2013 date is particularly important because Turkey introduced tougher building regulations after a 1999 quake in northwestern Turkey killed more than 17,000 people.

Officers detained the contractor, Mehmet Yasar Coskun, at Istanbul airport as he tried to run away to Montenegro, state news agency Anadolu said.

The White Helmets rescue group has accused the United Nations of botching its response in rebel-held areas of northwestern Syria to this week’s devastating quake.

Leveraging years of experience gleaned during Syria’s more than decade-long war, the White Helmets have been spearheading rescue efforts in rebel areas with virtually no outside help.

“The UN has committed a crime against the Syrian people in the northwest,” the group’s chief Raed Saleh said, noting that UN agencies had not delivered any quake-specific relief to survivors since the disaster hit before dawn on Monday.

“The UN must apologise to the Syrian people.”

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey has designated as a “terrorist” group, has announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work in the wake of the massive earthquakes that struck southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria.

“Thousands of our people are under the rubble,” the group’s co-leader Cemil Bayik told the PKK-linked ANF news agency, urging that the focus should be on recovery work rather than waging war.

“We call on all our forces engaged in military actions: Stop the military actions in Turkey, in metropolises and cities,” he said.

Bayik said the pause in fighting would stay in place “until the pain of our people is relieved and their wounds are healed”.

Water from the Mediterranean Sea has flooded parts of the centre of the Turkish coastal city of Iskenderun following Monday’s earthquakes.

Floodwater was still present on Friday as rescue efforts continue in the heavily damaged city.

Reporting by Paul Osterlund in Iskenderun.

At least nine children have been rescued from under the rubble in southwestern Turkey and northwestern Syria on the fifth day of searching after two earthquakes killed thousands of people.

Videos released by disaster services showed the children brought out of the rubble after surviving the seismic shifts and days without food or water.

Their astonishing survival has inspired search crews as they continue to comb through the destruction in hopes of finding more survivors.

A senior World Health Organization official bemoans Syria’s “forgotten crisis” as aid began trickling into rebel-held areas, days after a devastating earthquake.

As the WHO prepared to fly medical supplies to Syria from Dubai, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said a huge backlog of aid was waiting to reach Syria’s rebel-held northwest.

“The world’s forgotten about Syria,” Ryan told reporters in Dubai.

“Frankly, the earthquake’s brought attention back, but those millions of people in Syria have been struggling now for years. That’s become a forgotten crisis.”

Emergency aid is pouring into southeastern Turkey after Monday’s earthquakes, but why is it so much harder for aid to reach northern Syria?

Both sides of the border have been devastated by the disaster, which struck after years of conflict and displacement. With the death toll rising every day, will Syrians get the international spotlight they need?

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Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, has ruled that emergency teams deployed to Turkey to help in the earthquake response should work through the Jewish Sabbath to save lives.

“So long as there is any hope of saving lives and finding survivors, operations should continue,” Lau said in a public letter to the rescue teams.

“The treatment being given to the wounded should not be interrupted,” he said.

The English Premier League has said it will be donating one million pounds in response to the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

“The Premier League is deeply saddened by the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, which have killed thousands of people,” a statement from England’s top football league read.

“The League will make a £1 million [$1.2m] donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Appeal to deliver humanitarian aid directly to those in need.”

European football governing body UEFA and its UEFA Foundation for Children is donating an initial 200,000 euros [$214,000] to support the humanitarian operation in Turkey and Syria.

The UN rights chief has called for an immediate ceasefire in Syria to help get aid to earthquake survivors.

“UN human rights chief Volker Turk calls for immediate ceasefire in Syria, and full respect for human rights and humanitarian law obligations so help can reach everyone,” the UN rights office said in a tweet.

The Syrian government has approved humanitarian aid deliveries across the front lines of the country’s 12-year war, state media say, adding aid would arrive with the help of the UN, Syrian Red Crescent and international Red Cross.

“The Council of Ministers approves … the delivery of humanitarian aid to all parts of the Syrian Arab Republic,” a cabinet statement said.

State media reported that the government has also declared the areas worst affected by Monday’s deadly earthquakes – Latakia, Hama, Aleppo and Idlib – as disaster zones and would set up a fund for reconstruction.

The football leagues of Italy, England, Spain, France and Germany will observe a minute’s silence for the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria before matches this weekend, leagues and federations has said.

In a statement, Italy’s FIGC said the silence would be observed across “every league with games scheduled for the weekend (including matches on Monday)”.

“The world of football offers its support to the victims of the earthquake. We can’t be indifferent in the face of such a tragedy,” said FIGC president Gabriele Gravina.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the death toll from the recent major earthquakes in the country rose to 19,388 while 77,711 people were injured as a result.

Speaking in Malatya, Erdogan also said the government will provide relocation aid and rent support for the people from the earthquake-hit zone.

Rescue workers in the Turkish city of Iskenderun may have found a survivor under the rubble of destroyed buildings, more than 110 hours after the initial earthquake.

Rescue workers paused and urged everyone in the area to be still and silent as the voice of a person emerged from the wreckage of a collapsed building in the city centre.

Reporting by Paul Osterlund in Iskenderun.