Antakya, The Indonesia Post – Two women, including an elderly person, have been rescued from under the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey after being trapped for 122 hours, authorities said Saturday.
Monday morning’s deadly earthquake claimed more than 24,000 lives, including in neighboring Syria.
The elderly Menekse Tabak, 70, is seen wrapped in a blanket as rescuers rush him to an ambulance in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras Province, according to images released by Anadolu.
Another survivor, Masallah Cicek, 55, was rescued from the rubble in Diyarbakir, the largest city in southern Turkey, according to the official news agency.
A total of 67 people have been evacuated from under the rubble in the last 24 hours, said Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay, in a rescue effort involving 31,000 rescuers across the affected areas.
About 80,000 people were hospitalized, while another 1.05 million people were homeless and in shelters, he said.
He said the government would provide permanent shelter within the next year to ensure that survivors can return to normal lives and “treat their pain as soon as possible”.
As many residents face food shortages and bone-chilling winter weather, the government’s response to the disaster has been questioned.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad visited the affected area for the first time, visiting a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, state media said.
His government approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to all the front lines of the country’s 12-year civil war.
The World Food Program earlier said it was running out of food stocks in rebel-held areas of northwestern Syria as fighting complicated aid efforts.
Monday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which was followed by several aftershocks across Turkey and Syria, became the 7th deadliest disaster this century.
The death toll from the quake exceeds the toll from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 and is close to the 31,000 people who died from the quake in Iran in 2003.
A similar disaster also occurred in Turkey in 1999 when more than 17 thousand people died in an earthquake.
Also read: Indonesian humanitarian aid departs for Turkey
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday visited Adiyaman Province, where he acknowledged the government’s response had not been as quick as it could have been.
“Even though we have the largest search and rescue team in the world right now, the reality is that the search effort is not as fast as we would like,” he said.
The opposition has used the issue to attack Erdogan, who hopes to be re-elected in elections this year.
The elections which had been scheduled for May 14 were then postponed because of the earthquake.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of Turkey’s main opposition party, criticized the government’s response.
“The earthquake was massive, but what’s even bigger is the lack of coordination, lack of planning and incompetence,” he said in a statement.
The death toll in Turkey rose to 20,665 on Saturday, the disaster management agency said. In Syria, more than 3,500 people have died.
Many victims are still under the rubble. (mhn/bbs)
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