Category: Foreign

• UN expects toll above 50,000

Turkish officials have detained or issued arrest warrants for some 130 people allegedly involved in shoddy and illegal construction methods, as the earthquake death toll surpasses 34,000.

Rescuers yesterday ay continued to pull a few survivors from the rubble, six days after twin earthquakes that hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria collapsed thousands of buildings.

The death toll from the 7.8-magnitude quake has risen to 34,179 with figures expected to continue to grow as the odds of finding more survivors quickly fades.

The death toll in Turkey has reached 29,605, Turkish Emergency Coordination Center SAKOM said Sunday.

The confirmed death toll in Syria is 4,574 according to the Health Ministry of the Salvation Government governance authority.

But, UN relief chief Martin Griffiths has said he expects the death toll to at least double, after he arrived in southern Turkey on Saturday to assess the quake’s damage.

The focus is beginning turned to who was to blame for not better preparing people in the earthquake-prone region that includes an area of Syria that was already suffering from years of civil war.

Even though Turkey has construction codes that meet current earthquake-engineering standards, they are rarely enforced resulting in thousands of building toppling down, crushing residents during the quakes.

Warrants have been issued for the detention of 131 people suspected to being responsible for collapsed buildings, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said late on Saturday.

Turkey’s justice minister has vowed to punish anyone responsible, and prosecutors have begun gathering samples of buildings for evidence on materials used in constructions.

The quakes were powerful, but victims, experts and people across Turkey are blaming bad construction for multiplying the devastation.

Authorities at Istanbul Airport yesterday detained two contractors who have been held responsible for the destruction of several buildings in Adiyaman, the private DHA news agency and other media outlets have reported.

The pair were reportedly on their way to Georgia.

One of the arrested contractors, Yavuz Karakus, told reporters: “My conscience is clear.  “I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules.”

Two more people were arrested in the province of Gaziantep suspected of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.

Another building contractor was detained by authorities on Friday at Istanbul airport before he could board a flight out of the country.

He was the contractor of a luxury 12-story building in the historic city of Antakya, in Hatay province, the collapse of which left an untold number of dead. Turkey’s Justice Ministry has also announced the planned establishment of “Earthquake Crimes Investigation” bureaus.

Canadian Prime Minister yesterday confirmed he “ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace”.

Trudeau, said he ordered a United States (U.S.) fighter jet to shoot down an “unidentified object” flying in Canadian airspace just a day after one was taken down over Alaska.

North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad), the combined US-Canadian body which provides shared defence of airspace over the two nations, detected a cylindrical object flying at high altitude over Alaska on Friday evening before it crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.

Both Mr Trudeau and US President, Joe Biden, ordered the object to be shot down, after which Canadian and US jets were scrambled and a US jet hit it with a missile.

Confirming the action on Twitter, Trudeau wrote: “I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. Norad Command shot down the object over the Yukon.

“Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled, and a US F-22 successfully fired at the object.”

He added that Canadian forces would now “recover and analyse the wreckage of the object” and thanked Norad for “keeping the watch over North America”.

It is the third unidentified flying object F-22 fighter jets have taken out in airspace above the US and Canada over the course of seven days. At least one is believed to be a spy balloon from China but the other two have not been publicly identified.

Canada’s defence minister, Anita Anand, said the object, flying at around 40,000 feet, had been shot down at 3.41pm local time approximately 100 miles from the Canada-US border in the central Yukon, the westernmost Canadian territory, and the Canadian armed forces and the royal Canadian mounted police were now recovering it.

She said it appeared to be “a small cylindrical object, smaller than the one that was downed off the coast of North Carolina.”

General Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said the instructions given to the jets was “whoever had the first, best shot to take out the balloon had the go ahead.”

Major Olivier Gallant, a Norad spokesman, said the military had now determined what it was but would not reveal details.

Hours later, the US Federal Aviation Administration said it had closed some airspace in Montana after a “radar anomaly” was detected and fighter aircraft were sent to investigate.

Norad said no object was identified that correlated to the radar information.

Just a day earlier, White House National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot out of the skies above a remote area of Alaska.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus planned to visit the Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday.

The visit would be in the wake of this week’s earthquakes, according to his cabinet chief in Geneva.

Aleppo, in the northwest of the country, is controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

WHO could not initially say whether Tedros would also visit rebel-controlled regions around Idlib or not.

Read Also: 20,000 killed in Turkey-Syria earthquake as hope of finding survivors fades

The White Helmets rescue organisation, which was active in the rebel-controlled region around Idlib, had criticised the lack of UN aid following the earthquakes.

According to WHO, a cargo plane with medical supplies arrived in Damascus and the supplies were brought to the earthquake-affected region in the northwest of the country.

Both areas controlled by the government and those controlled by rebels have been affected by the earthquake.

Two more cargo planes with materials were scheduled to take off by Sunday, with enough supplies for 400,000 people, WHO said.

(dpa/NAN) 

•Joy as more people rescued three days after

COLD, hunger and despair gripped hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria yesterday.

But, hopes of finding more people alive faded yesterday amid the ruins of cities.

The death toll from the quakes, which struck early on Monday morning, passed 20,000 across both countries.

That surpasses the more than 17,000 people killed in 1999 when a similarly powerful quake hit Turkey’s more densely populated northwest.

Hiwever, emergency workers in Turkey yesterday rescued a mother with her two children after they had spent about 78 hours under the earthquake rubble.

Pictures shows how helpers carried the woman and the children on a stretcher and in slings to the ambulance amid applause from bystanders.

They had been holding out under the rubble of their house in Kahramanmaras province.

The rescuers embraced one another, and one of them told broadcaster CNN Türk that he was happy about the small success.

They had worked for 15 hours to free the family, he said.

The rescue workers were fighting against time the chances of finding survivors diminish with every hour that passes since the earthquake

A Turkish official said the disaster posed “very serious difficulties” for the holding of an election scheduled for May 14 in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been expected to face the toughest challenge in his two decades in power.

With anger simmering over the slow delivery of aid and delays in getting the rescue effort underway, it is bound to play into the vote should it still go ahead.

However, the first United Nations convoy carrying aid to stricken Syrians crossed over the border from Turkey, three days since quake struck.

In Syria’s Idlib province, Munira Mohammad, a mother-of-four who had fled Aleppo after the quake, said: “It is all children here, and we need heating and supplies, last night we couldn’t sleep because it was so cold. It is very bad.”

Hundreds of thousands of people across both countries have been left homeless in the middle of winter. Many have camped out in makeshift shelters in supermarket car parks, mosques, roadsides or amid the ruins, often desperate for food, water and heat.

At a gas station near the Turkish town of Kemalpasa, people picked through cardboard boxes of donated clothes. In the port city of Iskenderun, Reuters journalists saw people huddled round campfires on roadsides and in wrecked garages and warehouses.

Authorities say some 6,500 buildings in Turkey collapsed and countless more were damaged in the quake zone where some 13 million people live.

The confirmed death toll in Turkey rose to 16,170 yesterday, Erdogan said.

In Syria, already devastated by nearly 12 years of civil war, more than 3,000 people have died, according to the government and a rescue service in the opposition-held northwest.

In Turkey’s Maras, people camped inside a bank, taping a sheet in the window for privacy. Others had set up on the grass median of a main road, heating instant soup on fires and wrapping themselves in blankets.

In Antakya, few petrol stations had fuel and kilometers-long queues stretched from those that did.

In the devastated Syrian town of Jandaris, Ibrahim Khalil Menkaween walked in the rubble-strewn streets clutching a white body bag. He said he had lost seven members of his family including his wife and two of his brothers.

“I’m holding this bag for when they bring out my brother, and my brother’s young son, and both of their wives, so we can pack them in bags,” he said. “The situation is very bad. And there is no aid.”

Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 kilometers (280 miles) from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east.

There were still some signs of hope. Turkish footage late on Wednesday showed a few more survivors being rescued, including Abdulalim Muaini, who was pulled from his collapsed home in Hatay, where he had remained since Monday next to his dead wife.

Rescue workers dug out a 60-year-old woman named Meral Nakir from the rubble of an apartment block in Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake struck, state broadcaster TRT showed in live coverage.

Barefoot and her faced bruised, Nakir was wrapped in a blanket and carried to a waiting ambulance.

A two-year-old boy was picked out of the rubble by a Romanian and Polish rescue team in Hatay 79 hours after the quake, video released by Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) yesterday showed. The boy, wearing a striped sweater, cried as he was gently lifted from the hole where he had been trapped.

Many in Turkey have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped – sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.

Further slowing the relief effort, the main road into Antakya was clogged with traffic as residents sought to leave the disaster zone and aid trucks headed in.

After facing criticism over the initial response, Erdogan said on a visit to the area on Wednesday operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless.

The UN envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, said in Geneva “absolutely everything” was needed in terms of aid. Roads leading to the border crossing had been destroyed, causing delays, he said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has chaired emergency meetings on the earthquake but has not addressed the nation in a speech or news conference.

Four days into the earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border region, the reported death toll has risen to more than 16,000 people, according to Turkey news agency ANADOLU.

The agency, which quoted the country’s disaster management agency, AFAD, announced that in Turkey, there were now 12,873 confirmed fatalities while 62,937 were injured.

According to the Syrian state agency, SANA, and the rescue organization, White Helmets, 3,162 people have died in the quake in Syria.

Read Also: Death toll in Turkey, Syria earthquakes hits 12,000

The report, which was obtained in different parts of the quake zone, said the affected areas were initially difficult to access, and the number of victims was rising as the recovery work progressed.

The region was hit first by a quake of magnitude 7.7 early on Monday morning, according to measurements by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).

The second quake of magnitude 7.6 occurred about noon. The reports said there had been hundreds of aftershocks since then. (dpa/NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

•Buhari, world leaders mourn

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has extended Nigeria’s sympathy and solidarity to the governments and people of Turkey and Syria over the earthquakes that have claimed thousands of lives in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep.

As of the time of going to press last night, 3,500 lives had been lost in Turkey and Syria to the devastating earthquakes, which struck in the early hours of yesterday.

Also, a small earthquake rumbled through western New York early yesterday, alarming people in a region unaccustomed to such shaking but apparently causing no significant damage.

The United States (U.S.) Geological Survey preliminarily reported a 3.8 earthquake centered east of Buffalo in the suburb of West Seneca at about 6.15am. Seismologist Yaareb Altaweel said it matched the intensity of the strongest earthquake the region has seen in 40 years of available records — a 3.8 quake that was recorded in November 1999.

The shaking lasted a few seconds and sent residents first to their windows and then to social media in search of an explanation.

According to a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, President Buhari also assured the countries of Nigeria’s willingness to give support in any way possible.

The statement reads: “President Muhammadu Buhari extends heartfelt commiserations to the governments and people of Turkey and Syria, and those who lost family and friends in the devastating earthquake in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep.

“The President wishes those injured a speedy recovery and assures that the prayers and thoughts of Nigerians are with the many affected by this severe disaster and its aftershocks.

“As a steadfast friend to Turkey and Syria, President Buhari says Nigeria is ready to offer its full support in any way possible.”

Last night, hundreds of people were believed to be trapped under rubble, fueling possible rise in the death toll.

Rescue workers were searching mountains of wreckage in cities and towns across the area.

On both sides of the border, residents jolted out of sleep by the pre-dawn quake rushed outside on a cold winter’s night.

So far, the Turkish government has received offers of assistance from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the European Union, and 45 countries, including embattled Ukraine.

The Greek Head of Government Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that Greece would help immediately in spite of tensions between his country and Turkey.

Mitsotakis said Greece had rescue teams with extensive experience in earthquake-hit regions. The two NATO members had helped each other during major earthquakes in Turkey and Greece in 1999.

Italy’s civil defence also offered help, according to the government.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was following the situation in the disaster area, expressing sympathy to those affected.

According to the President of the country’s disaster management agency, besides, the deaths recorded in 10 Turkish provinces, 8,500 people were injured.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed past 430 people, with some 1,280 injured, according to the health ministry.

In the country’s rebel-held North-west, groups that operate there said the death toll was at least 380, with many hundreds more injured.

Buildings were reduced to piles of pancaked floors, and major aftershocks or new quakes, including one nearly as strong as the first, continued to rattle the region.

Rescue workers and residents in multiple cities searched for survivors, working through tangles of metal and concrete. A hospital in Turkey also collapsed, and patients, including newborn babies, were evacuated from facilities in Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “Because the debris removal efforts are continuing in many buildings in the earthquake zone, we do not know how high the number of dead and injured will rise. Hopefully, we will leave these disastrous days behind us in unity and solidarity as a country and a nation.”

The quake, which was centred on Turkey’s South-Eastern Province of Kahramanmaras, was felt as far away as Cairo. It sent residents of Damascus rushing into the street and jolted awake people in their beds in Beirut.

In the Turkish city of Adana, one resident said three buildings near his home were toppled.

The tremor struck a region that has been shaped on both sides of the border by more than a decade of civil war in Syria.

On the Syrian side, the region affected is divided between government-held territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from that conflict.

The opposition-held regions in Syria are packed with some four million people displaced from other parts of the country by the fighting.

Many of them live in buildings that had been wrecked from past bombardments. Hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, according to the opposition emergency organisation, the White Helmets.

Ibrahim al Haj, a spokesperson for the voluntary White Helmets rescue service in the countryside of Aleppo, told dpa, “We are in a disaster area, some of my family members are still under the rubble.”

The injured are mainly suffering from skull fractures, broken legs and arms, he said.

Hours later, there had been reports of major tremors in the affected region. The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre confirmed that a second earthquake of at least 7.5 magnitude hit Turkey.

The earthquake came as the middle eastern country is experiencing a snowstorm that is expected to continue until Thursday.

Turkey shelters more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees, according to data from Human Rights Watch.

Tremor hit south-eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria yesterday morning. Both countries reported hundreds of fatalities and thousands of injuries

Erdogan said rescue teams have rescued hundreds of people from under the rubble of buildings flattened by the quake.

The confirmed death toll in Turkey following a devastating earthquake in the Syrian-Turkish border region has risen to 3,381.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said more than 20,000 people were injured.

AFAD added that over 5,700 buildings were reported to have collapsed.

Read Also: Istanbul: Six dead, dozens wounded in Turkey explosion

Weather conditions were very bad in the region, said Orhan Tatar, head of the earthquake and risk reduction department.

This included heavy snowfall, downpours and strong winds in the affected regions.

Temperatures are around freezing point in some places.

The powerful earthquake, measured at magnitude 7.7, struck south-east Turkey in the border region with Syria early on Monday morning.

It was followed at about noon by another quake with a magnitude of 7.5.

AFAD said there had been 285 aftershocks.

(dpa/NAN)