Turkey, Syria. Earthquake. Killed and wounded. The death toll is rising

On Monday morning, a week after an earthquake hit the Turkish-Syrian border, rescuers are still pulling people out of the rubble alive. The Reuters agency cites the example of a 40-year-old woman from the Turkish province of Gaziantep who spent about 170 hours under the rubble. While the media continue to report on the success of search parties, the chances of finding people alive are getting smaller, Reuters reported.

The latest figures put the total death toll at around 34,000. The Turkish side reports over 29.6 thousand dead. In Syria, at least 4,300 people have been killed and more than 7,600 injured, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

On the Syrian-Turkish border, the earthquake affected 23 million people living in an area of ​​120,000 square kilometers. In Turkey, more than 25,000 buildings have been destroyed and 170,000 have to be examined.

At least 150,000 rescuers and workers of aid organizations operate in the areas damaged by seismic tremors. Bank of America initially estimated that it would cost $5 billion to rebuild the damaged homes.

Residents who survived the quake complained of an increase in crime. In Antioch (Antakai), aid workers told journalists about looting goods from collapsed houses and shops. Reuters journalists spoke to people who shared their uncertainty about whether they would be able to protect their possessions. Yuksel Uzun, an electronics store owner, loaded boxes of goods, including chargers and phone cases, onto two trucks with the help of several others. – Our shop is in ruins. Fraudsters and thieves took what they could. We stayed with what they left behind, he said.

Uzun added that he had seen supermarkets, pharmacies and various other establishments broken into. – They plundered everywhere. Market across the street, shoe shops. I saw them break into the pharmacy, ”he said.

Berkan Yogurtcuoglu, the store manager, stated that supermarket looting was common in the early days as aid and supplies arrived later. – For the first few days, everyone looted supermarkets because they had to. I robbed a supermarket because I needed diapers for my children.

The increase in such incidents has also fueled anti-immigrant sentiment. Several people interviewed by Reuters blamed Syrians, Afghans and other migrants for the looting, but offered no evidence to support their claims. Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Sunday that 57 people had been arrested for looting.

The epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria on Monday morning was in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province. Less than 12 hours later, a second 7.7-magnitude quake occurred several dozen kilometers to the north. Both phenomena were accompanied by a series of over 100 aftershocks.

The affected region of south-eastern Turkey and north-western Syria is seismically active and tremors are frequent. However, the latter is the most powerful cataclysm of this type in this region in recent times. In 1999, an earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, killed 17,000-18,000 people. Measurements showed that the quake had a magnitude of 7.6.

The deadliest earthquake in the history of seismic measurements was recorded in 1976 in the Chinese province of Tangshan. The official figures of the authorities spoke of 250,000 victims. They were probably greatly underestimated, because some sources gave the number of people killed as high as 650,000. The earthquake in Tangshan had an official magnitude of 7.5, although other measurements put it as high as 8.2. In turn, the magnitude of 9.5 was the strongest recorded quake in history, in 1960, in Chile. More than 1,650 people died then.