Ankara [Turkey], February 16: According to Al Jazeera, Turkish authorities have recorded 35,418 deaths in the country, making the February 2 tragedy the deadliest earthquake in modern Turkish history (the previous record was 33,000). died in the 1939 earthquake). Meanwhile, the Syrian government and the United Nations say the earthquake has killed more than 5,800 people in Syria.
Speaking from Ankara late on February 14, after a five-hour cabinet meeting, Turkish President RecepTayyip Erdogan said 47,000 buildings had been destroyed or damaged so badly that they needed to be razed. Describing the quake as "strong like an atomic bomb", he said it was one of the most severe disasters "in human history" but the situation was now under control. "We will continue our work until we get the last citizen out of the destroyed buildings," the leader said.
In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras , a 42-year-old woman named MelikeImamoglu was rescued from the rubble on February 15 after being buried for about 222 hours, continuing the list of miraculous survivors. Earlier, rescue teams in Turkey found nine survivors on February 14, as the focus of the recovery operation shifted to helping those without shelter or food in the middle of the season. freezing cold.
"The demand is huge and growing by the hour," Hans Henri P. Kluge, European director of the World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters. He said about 26 million people in both Turkey and Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance. In addition, concerns are growing about health problems related to cold weather, sanitary conditions and the spread of infectious diseases.
In a remarkable development, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi arrived in Damascus on February 15, marking the first visit to Syria by a senior Jordanian official since the outbreak of conflict in Syria in 2011, according to Reuters. On the same day, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan also arrived in Turkey, in an effort to bring the two countries closer together after decades without diplomatic or commercial relations.
Source: ThanhNien Newspaper