Turkey-Syria updates: Rescues continue as death toll nears 26,000

The death toll in Turkey rose to 22,327 people on Saturday night, according to the country’s disaster management authority.

Syria’s death toll stood at 3,553.

With temperatures below freezing, the line of earthquake victims waiting for steaming hot stews and soups stretches out into the dark in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

Ajde Gunes is one of them, grateful to the restaurants that are feeding the army of homeless in Turkey’s gourmet capital.

“The queues are enormous but the restaurants have done more than the government,” Gunes said, pointedly.

The restaurants are among tens of thousands of people working hard to help families in any way they can across the country after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria.

A shipment of Italian humanitarian aid destined for government-held parts of Syria landed in Beirut, Italy’s envoy to Damascus has said, in the first European earthquake assistance to the government.

The 30-tonne shipment includes four ambulances and 13 pallets of medical equipment, Charge d’Affaires Massimiliano D’Antuono told Reuters.

A team of four doctors was also en route, he said.

Volunteers struggling to find ever fewer survivors in the quake-hit Turkish city of Antakya have said ransacking and hygiene problems were adding to their daunting task.

One resident, searching for a colleague buried in a collapsed building, said he witnessed looting in the first days after Monday’s quake before leaving the city for a village.

“People were smashing the windows and fences of shops and cars,” said Mehmet Bok, 26, now back in Antakya and searching for a work colleague in a collapsed building.

Another rescuer, Gizem from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, said she had also seen looters in the four days she had been in Antakya.

“We cannot intervene much as most of the looters carry knives. They caught a looter today, people chased after him,” she said in the city where there was a heavy police and military presence directing traffic, helping rescuers and handing out food.

She described Antakya as a place of death and destruction when she arrived. “We could not hold back our tears,” she said as ambulance sirens wailed in the background.

“If people don’t die here under the rubble, they’ll die from injuries, if not they will die from infection. There is no toilet here. It is a big problem,” she said, adding that there were not enough body bags for all the dead.

A TCG Bayraktar, the landing craft of the Turkish army, which was converted into a floating hospital after the earthquakes, has been serving those in need in the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

The Turkish army deployed the ship carrying health workers and 560 beds, to MMK Metallurgy Port in the Dortyol District of Hatay, which was severely affected by the two earthquakes that hit the region.

The TCG Bayraktar treated 306 people in the first 24 hours after starting it anchored. The ship has an operating room and intensive care units.

Turkish authorities have arrested 48 people for looting after a powerful earthquake hit Turkey, state media reported.

The suspects were held in eight different provinces as part of investigations into looting after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit the region, killing more than 25,000 people in Turkey and Syria, news agency Anadolu said.

Reporting from the epicentre of the quake in Kahramanmaras, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar says that, on the sixth day since the earthquakes hit the area, survivors were still being found.

“A five-year-old Syrian girl was taken out of the rubble, alive. An hour later, another girl was pulled out of the rubble, and she was also alive. These are the rare moments of joy here,” said Serdar.

“This city has seen so much that it needs some good news, and it also gives a spark of hope to the families,” he added.

Serdar said that during the past few hours, however, several bodies were taken out from under the rubble at the same location. “They are probably from the same family,” he said.

He added that while speaking to a woman earlier, she reported already burying more than 110 members of her family and friends.

Turkey’s Ceyhan port could resume loading oil from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in one or two days using “manual” procedures, a Turkish official and a shipping source has said.

The terminal, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, was damaged in the devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday.

It is the storage and loading point for the BTC pipeline which carries oil from Azerbaijan, as well as the Kirkuk pipeline from Iraq.

The Kirkuk pipeline resumed flows on Tuesday evening and a tanker docked at Ceyhan loaded that day. A third tanker loaded on Friday.

However, BP Azerbaijan declared force majeure on loadings of Azeri crude from Ceyhan on Wednesday.

Reporting from Antakya, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith says that despite the overwhelming level of destruction in the capital of Turkey’s Hatay province, there was still a glimmer of hope.

“We are in the 135th hour now since the quakes, but there is still some hope. In the 132nd hour, a toddler was rescued, and a couple of hours before that a man and woman were rescued alive. The search for survivors has not stopped,” said Smith.

He added the government plans to reopen the airport in the city within 24 hours.

“The airport runway was badly damaged. They said they are about to re-tarmac that. This will be essential for relief flights. The need is so desperate for aid,” said Smith.

Turkish police have detained 12 people over collapsed buildings in the southeastern provinces of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa, local media reported, following the huge quake that hit Turkey.

Those taken into custody included contractors, DHA news agency said. At least 6,000 buildings collapsed after a 7.8-magnitude tremor hit the region, killing more than 25,000 people, sparking anger about the poor quality of housing.

There are expected to be more detentions after the public prosecutor in Diyarbakir, one of 10 southeastern provinces affected by the quake, issued arrest warrants for 29 people on Saturday, state news agency reported.

One of those detained Saturday was a contractor for a building in Gaziantep, the agency said, adding he was found by police in Istanbul.

Turkey’s president has raised the total death toll from Monday’s earthquakes, bringing the total confirmed dead in Turkey and Syria above 25,000.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that the number of those killed in the quakes in Turkey had reached 21,848. The total number of deaths in Syria stood at 3,553.

Reporting from Ankara, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu says 16 infants were transferred from the epicentre of the earthquake, Kahramanmaras, to the capital city, Ankara, by the Turkish authorities.

“All of them have been identified, but the authorities have not been able to reach their families,” reported Koseoglu.

“As these babies fight for their lives in the ICU, the authorities search for their families,” she said.

The premature babies will remain in the intensive care unit until they are stronger. The rest will be attended by foster mothers appointed by the government.

“The babies are in good shape,” said Ferit Kulal, a chief physician at the hospital where the babies have been taken. “One of the babies was born at 28 weeks and another at 33. Following the completion of their examinations, we will plan their discharge,” he said.

Reporting from Ankara, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu said that according to the spokesperson for the Turkish disaster management agency, AFAD, the reason for the huge level of destruction caused by Monday’s earthquakes was the length of the quakes.

The first earthquake, with a 7.8 magnitude, lasted for 65 seconds, while the second which happened a few hours later, lasted for 45 seconds, according to AFAD.

“We are talking about earthquakes that lasted more than two minutes. This is why we see this level of catastrophe in an area of about 110 square kilometres [42sq miles], where 13.5 million people lived,” reported Koseoglu.

She added that AFAD warned citizens to stay away from their buildings until they are risk assessed.

“Currently, there are 1300 teams on the ground to risk assess all the buildings. Until then, people will be taking shelter in the dormitories provided by the government.

“That is why universities will be closed until the summer and the dormitories will be designed for the earthquake survivors. Shelter is a big problem because we are talking about a large number of people,” explained Koseoglu.

Humanitarian groups working in southern Turkey and northwest Syria warn that Monday’s earthquake will have a “long tail” — a wide range of needs that will require donations for months, or even years, after the rescue and recovery missions end.

“We were able to do a massive distribution of food and blankets to more than 500 families,” from one of their warehouses in the immediate aftermath of the quake, said Avril Benoît, executive director for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières USA. Her organisation keeps emergency supplies on hand in the case of major disasters.

“There’s a long tail to an emergency like this, both for the injured from the earthquake, but also for chronic disease management, making sure they have access to their medications,” Benoit said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said they had 5,200 volunteers mobilised on both sides of the Syria-Turkey border, with the Turkish operation being more robust and better equipped because of its longstanding programme to support Syrian refugees.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his government would take action against those involved in looting and other crimes in the region hit by earthquakes.

“We’ve declared a state of emergency,” he said during a visit to the disaster zone. “It means that, from now on, the people who are involved in looting or kidnapping should know that the state’s firm hand is on their backs,” he said.

A Syrian doctor at a maternity hospital in Idlib province says the situation since the earthquakes is “very difficult” amid slow aid and medical deliveries.

“No food, no camps, no drinks. As doctors … we don’t have medical devices in our hospitals for many surgeries, [including] neurosurgeries. And the hospital is full of people,” Ikram Habbaoush, a member of the Syrian American Medical Society, told Al Jazeera via Skype.

“The aid has come very slowly. If your baby needs emergency surgery … we cannot do it because the medical devices have not arrived.”

Germany’s Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) and the aid organisation ISAR Germany are suspending their rescue work in Turkey’s Hatay province due to security concerns.

The organisations said on Saturday the safety situation had worsened on Saturday. While their teams remained at a joint base camp in the town of Kirikhan for now, if there was a concrete indication that someone could be rescued alive they would still go to the scene, THW spokeswoman Katharina Garrecht told the dpa news agency.

THW and ISAR attributed the tense situation to, among other things, “the shortage of food and the problematic water supply in the earthquake area”.

ISAR director of operations Steven Bayer said, “It can be seen that grief is slowly giving way to anger.”

Turkish President Erdogan has pledged to take concrete steps to begin rebuilding cities in the hard-hit southeast region within weeks, saying hundreds of thousands of buildings were uninhabitable across southern Turkey.

Erdogan made the statement as he announced the latest death toll in the country, which had risen to 21,043.

Erdogan also condemned those who have looted or committed other crimes in earthquake areas, saying they would be punished by the state.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has arrived in Syria’s quake-stricken city of Aleppo, state media reported.

Tedros “arrived at Aleppo airport to tour some hospitals and shelters with [Syria’s] health minister and the governor of Aleppo”, the official news agency SANA said.

Aleppo, in the northwest of the country, is controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Rescue teams in Turkey have pulled to safety a family of five who survived inside their collapsed home for five days.

Rescuers first extricated mother and daughter Havva and Fatmagul Aslan from among a mound of debris in the town of Nurdag, in Gaziantep province, HaberTurk reported.

The teams later reached the father, Hasan Aslan, but he insisted that his other daughter, Zeynep, and son Saltik Bugra be saved first.

As the father was brought out, rescuers cheered and chanted “God is Great!”

The dramatic rescue after 129 hours brings to at least nine the number of people rescued Saturday, despite diminishing hopes amid freezing temperatures.