Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: WHO deplores the "worst natural disaster in a century" in Europe

This is the "worst natural disaster in a century" in Europe, said Tuesday, February 14, the World Health Organization (WHO)

Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: WHO deplores the "worst natural disaster in a century" in Europe

This is the "worst natural disaster in a century" in Europe, said Tuesday, February 14, the World Health Organization (WHO). “We are still measuring the extent of it,” European branch director Hans Kluge insisted at a press conference.

The death toll now exceeds 35,000. Amid rubble and rubble, hundreds of thousands of homeless people still face hunger and cold in Turkey and Syria, more than a week after the powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the two countries.

The toll, still provisional, continues to grow and could even double according to the United Nations (UN): it amounted to 35,331 dead on Monday evening - 31,643 dead in southern Turkey, according to AFAD, Turkish public disaster management body, while authorities have counted 3,688 dead in Syria. "72,663 people may have lost their lives and 193,399 people may be injured," according to a report by employers' association Turkonfed published by Turkish media on Monday.

Glimmer of hope, new survivors were extracted from the rubble well beyond the crucial period of seventy-two hours after the disaster. During the night from Sunday to Monday, seven people were rescued alive in Turkey, according to the press, including a 3-year-old child in Kahramanmaras and a 60-year-old woman in Besni. Another, 40, was also rescued after 170 hours in Gaziantep.

As the chances of finding survivors become almost nil, the priority now is to help the hundreds of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed by the earthquake. According to the Turkish government, some 1.2 million people have been housed in student residences, more than 206,000 tents have been erected and 400,000 victims evacuated from the devastated areas.

In Antakya, the Antioch of Greek Antiquity, after the first three or four days of abandonment, relief is now organized. Basic toilets were installed, to the great relief of the survivors who were deprived of them for several days, and the telephone network was restored in part of the city.

A strong police and military presence was visible to prevent looting, after several incidents over the weekend. Many residents, however, justified the thefts from supermarkets in the first days by the state of absolute necessity in which many found themselves, without water, electricity, money or open shops.

Added to extreme material deprivation is psychological distress, which hits the youngest hardest. Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said 574 children extracted from the collapsed buildings were found unaccompanied.

In total, more than 7 million children are affected by this earthquake, UNICEF reported on Tuesday, which fears that several thousand of them have been killed. “In Turkey, the total number of children living in the ten provinces affected by the two earthquakes was 4.6 million. In Syria, 2.5 million children are affected,” said James Elder, a spokesman for the organization, at a press conference in Geneva.

For the first time since the deadly earthquake, a UN delegation entered on Tuesday, through the Bab Al-Hawa border post with Turkey, in the rebel areas of northwestern Syria. "It's largely a needs assessment mission," Kenn Crossley, director of the World Food Program in Syria, told Geneva.

Syria, for its part, announced the opening, for an initial period of three months, of two new crossing points with Turkey to speed up the arrival of humanitarian aid. Before the earthquake, almost all the aid, crucial for more than 4 million people living in the rebel areas of northwestern Syria, was channeled from Turkey through a single border crossing, that of Bab Al-Hawa.

Calls to open new crossing points between Turkey and northwestern Syria, some areas of which are controlled by the rebellion, had multiplied in recent days. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's move, which "will allow more aid to come in, faster."

Trucks, with on board enough to make shelters using plastic sheeting, as well as blankets, mattresses, ropes or even screws and nails, crossed the border on Monday. According to an official from the Syrian Ministry of Transport, Suleiman Khalil, 62 planes loaded with aid have so far landed in Syria and more are expected in the hours and days to come.

A Saudi plane loaded with 35 tonnes of food landed in Aleppo on Tuesday morning, the first plane from Saudi Arabia to arrive in Syria in more than a decade, according to Khalil. Two other Saudi planes loaded with humanitarian aid are expected on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the same source.