ANTAKYA, Turkey/JANDARIS, Syria, Feb 9, (Reuters) – The death toll from earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria this week neared 16,000 on Thursday as hopes faded of many people being found alive 72 hours since the disaster and frustration simmered over the slow delivery of aid.
A Turkish official said the disaster posed “very serious difficulties” for the holding of an election scheduled for May 14 in which President Tayyip Erdogan has been expected face the toughest challenge in his two decades in power.
On the ground, many people in Turkey and Syria spent a third night sleeping outside or in cars in freezing winter temperatures, their homes destroyed or so shaken by the quakes they were too afraid to re-enter. Hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless in the middle of winter.
The number of people killed by the quake, which struck in the dead of night and was followed by powerful aftershocks, is on course to be larger than in 1999 when a similarly powerful tremor killed 17,000 people in Turkey’s more densely populated northwest.
In Turkey, footage emerged late on Wednesday of a few more survivors being rescued, including Abdulalim Muaini, who was pulled from his collapsed home in Hatay, Turkey where he had remained since Monday next to his deceased wife.
Rescue workers pulled an injured 60-year-old woman named Meral Nakir from the rubble of an apartment block in the city of Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake struck, state broadcaster TRT showed in live coverage on Thursday.
GNA/Credit: Reuters