Turkey and Syria: death toll continues to rise alarmingly
The death toll from Monday's earthquakes in the border area between Turkey and Syria now exceeds 22,000, according to data provided by the authorities of both nations and the White Helmets, the aid group that helps in rescue efforts in Syrian territory controlled by opponents of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The tragedy continues to establish itself as one of the most serious of the century. The main quake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, with more than 430 aftershocks, hit the Turkish province of Gaziantep hard and was felt significantly in a swathe between the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Hama and the Turkish enclave of Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometres northeast of Syria, causing misfortune and devastation. Rescue conditions are being made difficult by the extensive material damage caused by the earthquakes, with more than 6,500 buildings collapsed in Turkey alone, as reported by the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), and by the inclement weather in the middle of winter. Four days after the natural disaster struck, hopes of still finding survivors are dwindling due to the lack of food and the harsh conditions to sustain life amidst all the destroyed buildings.
Some 100,000 troops, including volunteers, are working on the ground in Turkey and Syria in rescue efforts, but in some cases the work has been suspended due to the lack of hope of finding survivors. The search for survivors in the provinces of Sanliurfa and Kilis has been terminated by Ankara and is almost complete in Diyarbakir, Osmaniye and Adana. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there are also 380,000 homeless people who have had to rely on various public centres and even company infrastructure to provide shelter and access to various supplies.
The Turkish government on Friday raised the figures to more than 19,000 dead and more than 74,000 injured. In Syria, the numbers of dead and wounded may grow even more exponentially than in Turkey due to the intrinsic difficulties that exist in a country like Syria, which has been suffering since 2011 from a civil war that has pitted the government of Bashar al-Assad against the opposition. Turkey has greater resources and a better diplomatic situation to be able to access international aid. The situation contrasts with that of Syria, which is under international sanctions for the regime's harsh repression of the opposition. In the Middle Eastern country there are more doubts about the death toll because of the difficult conditions there in the face of the scourge of civil war and the greater lack of control.
In Syria, the death toll is over 3,300, including some 2,000 in rebel-held areas. "The situation is horrible," Mousa Zidane, spokesman for the White Helmets, told the daily El País.
For twelve years, Syria has been suffering from an endless war that still keeps regions in conflict with the involvement of different contenders: political opponents of the Damascus government, Kurdish organisations backed by the United States that are in turn persecuted by Turkey, and jihadist terrorist elements that are harassed by the government, each with their own support and interests. Control of the territory is divided: the largest part, in the south, is in the hands of the government, presided over by Bashar al-Assad, and the rest is divided into various provinces outside the control of the executive, which are under daily bombardment by the Syrian Armed Forces, supported by the regime's great ally, Vladimir Putin's Russia. Indeed, the Russian president sent a detachment of hundreds of soldiers to help with rescue work in Syria.
One of the rebel provinces is Idlib, close to the Turkish border to the north and the city of Aleppo to the south, with a population of four million inhabitants, many of them refugees and displaced by the civil war. It has been an area hard hit by the earthquake and it is here that perhaps thousands of victims are believed to be buried in the rubble, yet to be discovered. It is a poor region, destroyed and blocked both from the outside by Syrian forces and from the inside by the rebels themselves who are resisting Al-Assad's forces. This situation prevents the normal arrival of urgent aid from both national and international relief services. Assistance has been able to arrive gradually for the time being. Certain access routes are restricted, although the Bab al-Hawa pass in Idlib, which connects to the area of Gaziantep, the epicentre of the earthquakes, is accessible.
The UN is in negotiations with the Syrian government to be able to bring humanitarian assistance that it has stored inside the country to the northwest region controlled by rebel groups and which has been one of the worst affected by Monday's earthquake.
All this amid difficulties for cross-border transport of aid from Turkey because of damage to land routes. "Negotiations to send convoys (across the lines separating government-controlled and non-government-controlled areas) are continuing, but I understand that the government has accepted this as an emergency measure," said the UN refugee agency's Syria representative, Sivanka Dhanapala, as reported by the EFE news agency.
More than 45 countries have ordered relief and rescue material and personnel to be sent to Turkey and Syria. Among them are nations such as the United States, Israel, Germany, Spain, etc. International solidarity was shown soon after the earthquakes struck. However, the main recipient of aid has so far been Turkey.
On Thursday, a convoy with aid for those affected by the earthquake in Syria set off for the Turkish-Syrian border, as reported by The National. Up to six trucks of aid arrived in northwestern Syria after the UN said it expected to make deliveries there for the first time since Monday's earthquake. The expedition reached opposition-held Syrian territory after crossing the border into Turkey at the Bab al-Hawa crossing.
The UN said it had stopped aid passing through Turkey for logistical reasons, while Syrian opposition groups said the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey, the only UN-recognised route for aid to northwestern Syria, had been reopened. Up to four million people are affected in the border region, including displaced people living in the area. Difficulties are compounded by inconveniences such as the destruction of infrastructure and snow-blocked roads.
Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Russia are among those providing early assistance to Syria, with aid planes arriving in Damascus, while the ground was prepared for relief convoys to cross Syria's front lines in order to gain access to the northwest, as confirmed by the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, Muhannad Hadi. "We expect everyone to put the interests of the people first, we need to put politics aside," Hadi explained, as reported by The National.
Shortly after the powerful earthquake that has caused such destruction in Turkey and Syria struck, several agencies mobilised to manage aid for those affected. In addition to international cooperation, the Turkish Embassy and various international organisations have shared campaigns to send both financial and material donations to those affected by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
The NGOs that form part of the Emergency Committee (SOS Children's Villages, Educo, Doctors of the World, Oxfam Intermón, Plan International and World Vision) launched a joint campaign to channel more effectively the donations of people who want to collaborate in their response to the earthquake. This response will seek to provide shelter, nutrition, education, water and sanitation and health care either directly or through local partners. In this line, teams from Doctors of the World are working on the ground with the assistance of other organisations such as the Spanish SAMUR-Protección Civil, Madrid's municipal service in charge of emergency health care in the Spanish capital, to assist the victims of one of the biggest natural tragedies so far this century.