Rising casualties
More than 25,000 dead after earthquake disaster
People bury the dead in Adiyaman. photo
© Onur Dogman/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
Five days have passed since the devastating earthquakes. More and more deaths are being reported from the disaster areas in Turkey and Syria. The hope for survivors sinks.
The death toll after the earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border area has risen to more than 25,000. 22,327 deaths are reported from Turkey alone. More than 80,278 people were injured, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Saturday, according to the state news agency Anadolu. 3,553 deaths were recently reported from Syria.
More than 1.5 million sought shelter in tents or public shelters or hotels. The search and rescue work continued on Saturday. There were still isolated reports of people being rescued alive from the rubble.
The affected areas were initially difficult to access, but as the rescue work progressed, the number of victims increased. The chance of finding survivors decreases every hour.
Early Monday morning, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 according to the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) shook the Turkish-Syrian border area. Another earthquake of magnitude 7.6 followed in the same region on Monday afternoon.
Ten provinces in Turkey were affected by the earthquake. A three-month state of emergency has now come into force there. According to the Anadolu News Agency, the state of emergency can oblige public institutions, organizations or “legal and natural persons” in the region to hand over equipment, land, buildings, vehicles or medicines, among other things.