Turkey, Syria quake deaths pass 9,500

Deadliest in decade

GAZIANTEP (AP) – Thinly stretched rescue teams worked through the night in Turkey and Syria, pulling more bodies from the rubble of thousands of buildings toppled by a catastrophic earthquake. The death toll rose yesterday to more than 9,500, making the quake the deadliest in more than a decade.

Turkey’s disaster management agency said the country’s death toll had risen to 7,108, bringing the overall total to 9,638, including fatalities reported in neighboring Syria, since Monday’s earthquake and multiple aftershocks.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria has climbed to 1,250, with 2,054 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 1,280 people have died in the rebelheld northwest, according to volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets, with more than 2,600 injured.

That surpassed the 8,800 killed in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal in 2015.

Amid calls for the government to send more help to the disaster zone, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to travel to the town of Pazarcik, the epicenter of the quake, and to the worst-hit province of Hatay on Wednesday.

Turkey now has some 60,000 aid personnel in the quake-hit zone, but with the devastation so widespread, many are still waiting for help.

Nearly two days after the magnitude 7.8 quake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, rescuers pulled a threeyear-old boy, Arif Kaan, from beneath the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a city not far from the epicenter.

With the boy’s lower body trapped under slabs of concrete and twisted rebar, emergency crews lay a blanket over his torso to protect him from below-freezing temperatures as they carefully cut the debris away from him, mindful of the possibility of triggering another collapse.

REUTERS Photo shows a view of the intensive care unit of the Iskenderun state hospital following an earthquake in Hatay, Turkey on Tuesday.

A rescuer carries a baby girl after pulling her from the rubble caused by an earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey in the town of Jinderis, Syria on Tuesday. Residents in the northwest Syrian town discovered the crying infant whose mother gave birth to her while buried underneath the rubble of a five-story apartment building leveled by the earthquake. The baby (lower right photo) is receiving treatment at a hospital in Aleppo, Syria. Upper right photo shows a boy pulled out from a rubble during a rescue operation in Bisnia, Syria. AP, REUTERS