Key developments in the aftermath of the Turkey-Syria earthquake

KARAMANMARAS, Turkey (AP) — Rescuers have pulled out more survivors from the wreckage of the Feb. 6 earthquake that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria even as the window to search for living people shrinks.

Here’s a look at the key developments on the Friday after the earthquake.

High death toll

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu updated the death toll in Turkey to 39,672, bringing the total number of people killed by the earthquake in both Turkey and Syria to 43,360.

The number is sure to increase further as search teams recover more bodies from the devastation.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake was the deadliest disaster in Turkey’s modern history.

Save more survivors

Rescue workers on Friday removed a survivor from the rubble of a collapsed building in Defne district, in the hard-hit Hatay province, more than 11 days after the powerful earthquake struck.

Hakan Yasinoglu, 45, spent 278 hours under the rubble, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. Television footage showed him being taken on a stretcher to an ambulance.

Search teams working through the night also found a woman and two men alive in the earthquake wreckage.

The latest rescues came as crews began clearing rubble in quake-ravaged cities.

The private DHA news agency reported late Thursday that Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras, after being trapped for 258 hours.

And in the city of Antakya, police rescue teams found a 12-year-old boy named Osman alive after 17 bodies were recovered from a collapsed building.

“Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Usman at 260 hours,” Police Rescue Team Leader Okan Tosun told DHA.

An hour later, crews reached two men inside the wreckage of a collapsed hospital in Antakya.

One of them, Mustafa Afci, used the mobile phone of one of the rescuers to call his brother and ask about family members.

“Did they all survive?” he asked. “Let me hear their voices.”

UN aid crosses Syria

The United Nations said a total of 178 trucks carrying aid from Turkey into northwestern Syria have crossed the border since February 9.

Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the trucks were carrying a “large number” of items from six UN agencies – including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, cholera test kits, essential medicines and food. from the World Food Program.

UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said that according to recent estimates in northwest Syria, 50,000 families need tents or emergency shelters and that at least 88,000 families need mattresses, thermal blankets and clothes. In addition, UN partners say hospitals and medical centers are “extremely overstretched and under-resourced,” he said.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said it is working closely with Turkey to identify the necessary steps to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector that was damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.

“In Syria, rapid assessments conducted by FAO of earthquake-affected areas indicate a significant disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and long-term food security,” the Rome-based organization said in a statement.

The return of the Syrians

An official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing said that the bodies of at least 1,522 Syrians have been returned to Syria from Turkey for burial.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported that when figures from other smaller crossings are tallied, the number of earthquake victims sent back to Syria for burial is 1,745.

Syrian survivors have also begun crossing back from Turkey. About 1,795 Syrians crossed from Turkey into Syria on Wednesday, the first day after Turkey agreed to allow earthquake-affected Syrian refugees to return to their country temporarily without losing their protected status in Turkey, an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing said. .

The decision allows holders of Turkish temporary protection cards residing in the earthquake-affected areas to cross into Syria without the need to obtain a travel permit from the Turkish authorities. Normally, Turkey considers Syrians with protected status who crossed into Syria without permission to have abandoned their status as asylum seekers. They will be required to surrender their protection cards and banned from returning to Turkey for five years.

Spain receives 100 Syrians

Spain says it will take in about 100 Syrian refugees in Turkey who suffered from the quake. Immigration Minister José Luis Escrivá said refugees would be the most vulnerable and hardest hit by the quake.

In his announcement late Thursday, Escrivá said, “The earthquake reminds us of the Syrian drama in an enormous way, and we will try to help within our means.”

More than 1,500 children are separated from their families

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said the state is caring for 1,589 children separated from their families in the earthquake, of whom 247 have yet to be identified.

He said that 953 children have been reunited with their families.

Oktay also said that search and rescue teams are operating in fewer than 200 locations, with the largest number in Hatay province.

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Associated Press writers Jamie Keaton in Geneva, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this.

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Follow AP earthquake coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/earthquakes

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