Turkey-Syria Earthquake: Rescue phase ‘coming to a close’

The phase of the rescue after the major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria a week ago is "coming to a close" with urgency now switching to shelter, food, schooling and psychosocial care, the UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said during a visit to Syria yesterday.

"What is the most striking here, is even in Aleppo, which has suffered so much these many years, this moment ... was about the worst that these people have experienced," Griffiths said from the government-held northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo that was a major front line in the Syrian civil war.

With hopes of finding many more survivors in the rubble fast fading, the combined death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria from last Monday's 7.8 magnitude quake rose above 37,000 and looked set to keep increasing.

Griffiths said the United Nations would have aid moving from government-held regions to the rebel-held northwest, a front line across which aid has seldom passed during the conflict.

Aid appeals would be issued for all the regions hit by the disaster, he added. "We'll have assistance moving from here into the northwest but the northwest is only one part of Syria ... it's also very important that we take care of the people here," Griffiths said.

Griffiths also said he had heard traumatic accounts of the disaster from survivors in Aleppo.

"People who lost their children, some of whom escaped, others stayed in the building. The trauma of the people we spoke to was visible and this is a trauma which the world needs to heal," he said.

But as he was speaking, teams in southeastern Turkey plucked more people from the rubble. Officials said a young girl named Miray was rescued in Adiyaman 178 hours after the earthquake and a 35-year-old woman was also rescued in the same city.

A woman named Naide Umay was carried alive from a mess of crumbled masonry and twisted steel rods in Antakya, a video shared online by the mayor of Istanbul showed. Workers clapped as she was put in an ambulance.

Broadcaster Haberturk reported another woman and two children were rescued in Antakya, while CNN Turk reported a woman taken from the rubble in southern Gaziantep province.

Rescue workers in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras said they had contact with a grandmother, mother and baby trapped in one room in a three-storey building, with a fourth person possibly in another room, reports Reuters.

Rescuers, who included a Spanish team and the Turkish police and army, said they were trying to break a wall to reach the survivors but a column was delaying them. One rescue worker said the women were 3 metres below ground.

Residents and aid workers from several Turkish cities have cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.

Some business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.

Turkish authorities have started to crack down on social media accounts making "provocative" posts viewed as spreading fear and panic amid the public, the country's police headquarters said yesterday. It said 56 people had been detained and 14 remanded in custody.