Ankara (EFE) Syria, causing nearly 35,000 fatalities.
The television channels broadcast live the rescue in Kahramanmarash of the brothers Muhammed Enes and Abdulbaki Yeniar, aged 17 and 20, respectively, who were sent to hospitals with various injuries. rado.
Moments later, they also managed to pull 18-year-old Muhammed Cafer Çetin out of the rubble in the city of Adiyaman, after having previously contacted him and found that he was well and could speak.
These rescues are already considered “miracles”, as they occur nine days after thousands of buildings collapsed in ten provinces of Turkey, where in the first days relief teams were able to bring more than 80,000 people to safety.
Camps for the homeless
It is estimated that there are still tens of thousands of civilians under the rubble although rescue work has stopped in most of the affected cities and foreign aid workers have begun to return to their countries.
Instead, camps have begun to be set up to house the thousands of people who have lost everything.
“Now, under the freezing winter conditions, the main need is tents, containers,” said the president of the Ankara Chamber of Architects, Tezcan Karakus Candan, on Tuesday in Gaziantep.
According to Vice President Fuat Oktay, until last midnight, tent camps had been established in 257 points on an area of 110 square kilometers spread over 10 provinces.
In addition, the infrastructure of 27 container “cities” has been completed, with the aim of having between 150,000 and 200,000 containers, where some 20,000 people have already been accommodated.
Many of the earthquake survivors have also chosen to migrate to other provinces, posing a challenge for a country overwhelmed by the disaster.
The region hit by the earthquake, larger than Portugal, was inhabited by some 13 million people, of whom one million have lost their homes, according to official data.
The AFAD emergency management agency has reported the evacuation of 160,000 people, while more than 400,000 have left by plane from some of the airports in the affected area.
Complicated situation in Syria
To the internally displaced can be added the arrival of Syrians from the area on the other side of the border also devastated by the tremor, something that the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Çavusoglu, has denied that, for now, is happening.
A group of 35 NGOs present in Syria warned today that rescuers were only able to save lives in 5% of the opposition areas hit by the earthquakes due to a lack of resources.
The isolated opposition regions in the northwest of the country, the most affected by the tragedy, did not receive their first humanitarian aid until four days after the initial earthquake.
As revealed on Tuesday, the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to temporarily open two additional border crossings between Turkey and the northwestern part of the country under rebel control to facilitate the supply of humanitarian aid.
In the area controlled by the Syrian government, this Tuesday a Saudi plane with 35 tons of humanitarian aid landed in Aleppo.
“We support the brother Syrian people and offer our condolences for this great affliction,” said the head of the Saudi team created to help the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, Faleh al Subaie, quoted by the official Syrian news agency, SANA.
Saudi Arabia, one of the countries most critical of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad due to the civil conflict in Syria and its alliance with Shiite Iran, Riyadh’s arch-enemy, has sent eight planes with aid to the areas in recent days. hit by earthquakes.
Aleppo, along with Latakia, Hama and Idlib, have been the regions hardest hit by the tremors on the Syrian side, but some are controlled by different opposition groups to Al Asad, which has made rescue operations and basic aid difficult. the victims.
