Death toll surpasses 33,000 in Turkey, Syria earthquake as anger builds over response time

BY BENJAMIN OMOIKE

Nearly a week since the most devastating earthquake in recent history, rescue workers in Turkey and Syria were searching for signs of life in freezing temperatures as the death toll surpassed 33,000 and survivors expressed frustration about the rescue efforts.

The United Nations’ top aid official on Sunday said aid efforts have “failed the people in north-west Syria,” where more than 12 years of civil war have resulted in a complex political situation.

“They rightly feel abandoned,” Martin Griffiths wrote on Twitter from the Turkey-Syria border. “Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, toppling thousands of buildings and injuring tens of thousands of people. As many as 5.3 million people in Syria may need shelter, the U.N. Refugee Agency said, and the number of fatalities in both countries continues to rise.

Turkey’s death toll was 29,605 Sunday afternoon, the country’s interior ministry said. The toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue worker group the White Helmets. The overall toll in Syria stood at 3,553 Saturday, though the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days, The Associated Press reported.

But news of some remarkable rescues offered glimmers of hope. On Sunday, a young girl was pulled from the rubble “in the 150th hour” in Hatay, Turkey, the country’s health minister said on Twitter, where he shared a video of the rescue.

Earthquake aid from government-held parts of Syria into territory controlled by hard-line opposition groups has been “held up” by approval issues with the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Reuters reported Sunday.

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Greece’s foreign minister visited Turkey on Sunday in a show of support, despite longstanding tensions between the two countries.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said a Pakistani walked into a Turkish Embassy in the U.S. and donated $30 million for earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria. Sharif said on Twitter he was “deeply moved.”