STORY: (AUDIO AS INCOMING) During a visit to the air force base in Wunstdorf, Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser thanked the Air Force and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief for their quick help after the severe earthquake in Turkey and Syria on Monday. Pistorius said on Friday that three other machines with more than 40 tons of auxiliary material would fly from Wunstdorf to Turkey on the same day. “It’s a well-prepared action. There are already logisticians downstairs in Incirlik and that’s good because now it’s important that the material gets to where people can be helped quickly. Because that’s really a picture of devastation, like us can hardly imagine that,” said Pistorius. On Thursday, the THW flew 50 tons of relief supplies with the help of the air force to the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep in the earthquake area, including mainly tents, generators, heaters and winter sleeping bags. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser explained that the Turkish Minister of the Interior had thanked them for the aid that had already arrived. In addition, she said she was moved by the great wave of solidarity: O-TON NANCY FAESER (SPD), FEDERAL MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR “And I am deeply touched by the willingness to help of the people in Germany, especially the people who have a Turkish or Syrian migration background, which they have managed in the last few days to put together aid material, to help relatives, friends. That touches me deeply.” The number of officially registered deaths from the quake had passed the 21,000 mark on Friday morning, around 100 hours after the first tremors on Monday, and is already higher than the earthquake in Turkey in 1999, when 17,000 people died. The search for survivors by local and international emergency services in the extremely large disaster area continues.