LAST UPDATE | 15 Feb 2023

THE FOCUS HAS turned to caring for survivors as hundreds of thousands have been left homeless following the Turkey-Syria earthquake.

Here are the key updates on the ongoing response to the disaster:

• The UN said yesterday that over seven million children have been affected by the earthquake, as Unicef fears thousands more are dead under the rubble.
• The World Health Organisation has called the earthquake the “worst natural disaster” in 100 years in Europe.
• Emergency responders are fighting to save lives in a field hospital in Turkey, including a 25-year-old woman who was trapped for 180 hours.
• The first UN delegation delivering aid has made it into rebel-held northwestern Syria, having crossed from Turkey earlier today.
• A Saudi Arabian plane carrying aid into Syria has landed in Aleppo today – it is the first to touch down in Syrian territory in more than a decade of war.

A caravan of 11 United Nations trucks today entered Syria through the re-opened Bab al-Salama border point, after Damascus agreed to let the world body use the crossing for aid.

Before the earthquake struck, almost all the crucial humanitarian aid for the more than four million people living in rebel-controlled areas of northwest Syria was being delivered through just one crossing.

The trucks were loaded with essential humanitarian assistance, including shelter materials, mattresses, blankets and carpets, Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), told AFP.

A two months old baby was rescued from the rubble in Turkey 128 hours after the earthquake. pic.twitter.com/4fnOzOqsGu

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 11, 2023

A UN delegation also travelled from Turkey into the rebel-held area for the first time since the quake on an fact-finding mission.

Activists and emergency teams locally have decried the UN’s slow response to the quake in rebel-held areas, contrasting it with the planeloads of humanitarian aid that have been delivered to government-controlled airports.

“I don’t want to sit here and give excuses, but I wanted to share that we are all collectively in the same place,” Sanjana Quazi, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Turkey, told reporters in the rebel-held town of Sarmada.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called the quake the worst natural disaster to happen in Europe in 100 years. 

“We are witnessing the worst natural disaster in the WHO European region for a century and we are still learning about its magnitude,” Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said today.

Kluge also said the health body had “initiated the largest deployment of emergency medical teams” in the 75-year history of the WHO European region.

“22 emergency medical teams have arrived in Turkey so far,” Kluge noted, adding they would integrate into “Turkey’s ongoing health response”.

The devastating earthquakes in Türkiye & Syria have impacted families already living in vulnerable situations.@WFP is appealing for US$77 million to provide urgent food assistance to nearly 900,000 affected people. https://t.co/nfnsBTzXy2

pic.twitter.com/k6DzzdIuLP

— United Nations (@UN) February 13, 2023

‘Mind-boggling’

The UN also launched an appeal for $397 million to cover three months of “life-saving relief” for victims in Syria and said it was close to a similar plan for Turkey.

“Millions of people across the region are struggling for survival, homeless and in freezing temperatures,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

Fears have grown for survivors on both sides of the border, with the UN saying more than seven million children have been negatively impacted between Syria and Turkey, and noting fears that “many thousands” more had died.

“It is tragically clear that numbers will continue to grow,” said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, adding that the final toll would be “mind-boggling”.

Following the disaster, residents faced the hard realities of surviving in cities turned to ruin in the middle of the winter freeze.

In Turkey’s Kahramanmaras, huge crowds depended on a single toilet that still functioned in a central mosque.

“There are no toilets, the toilets should be set up in tents,” Husne Duz, 53, who has lived with thousands of others in a tent city for the past week.

“I walk five kilometres every day to come here for a toilet. We cannot find any other place,” Erdal Lale, 44, told AFP.

The acrid smell of smoke from hundreds of fires lit to keep away the cold permeated much of Turkey’s disaster zone.

“We need to take showers. There is a need for washing machines for clothes,” Duz said.

The White Helmets volunteers continue their tours of shelters for #earthquake victims and survivors in the NW #Syria to provide health & psychological care to civilians and assess needs in light of the difficult humanitarian conditions and low temperatures. pic.twitter.com/wX7NT5obZl

— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) February 13, 2023

Rescue hopes

In the devastated Turkish city of Antakya, clean-up teams have been shifting rubble and putting up basic toilets as the telephone network started to come back in parts of the town, an AFP reporter said.

And a week after the 6 February quake toppled buildings across the region, people were still being found alive under the rubble.

In the late afternoon, a middle-aged woman was pulled from the debris and put into an ambulance, according to an AFP team on the ground.

Doctors at the local field hospital were trying to save people who emerged after being buried for days.

“It’s a miracle to find a patient still alive under the rubble,” doctor Yilmaz Aydin told AFP.

“From now on, the survivors are likely to be in a more critical condition. The majority of them will need life-saving treatment,” said Aydin.

One was 25-year-old Syrian woman Abir, who spent 180 hours trapped under the rubble.

“Her heart stopped two times but we managed to bring her back,” said doctor Nihat Mujdat Hokenek.

The confirmed death toll from the quake stands at over 40,000.

The count has barely changed in Syria for several days and is expected to rise.

– © AFP 2023