Daily Camera (Boulder)

Death toll from earthquake­s continues to rise

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that struck at 4:17 a.m. local time and a magnitude 7.5 quake the first temblor likely triggered nine hours hours later.

A 17-year-old girl was rescued Thursday morning, 248 hours after the original quake, from the debris of a collapsed building in Kahramanma­ras, a city located near the epicenter, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The girl, Aleyna Olmez, told reporters from her hospital bed that she was well and tried to pass the time by distractin­g herself. “I had nothing with me,” she said.

Hacer Atlas, a rescuer who was involved in reaching Olmez, told Anadolu: “First we held her hand, then we took her out.

She is in a very good condition,. She can communicat­e. I hope we will continue to receive good news about her.”

Hadi defended the U.N.’S response to the disaster, which many in Syria have criticized as slow and inadequate.

Hadi said the UN urged “everybody to depolitici­ze the humanitari­an situation and focus on supporting us to reach the people.”

The U.N. has reported a death toll of about 6,000 for all of Syria, including 4,400 in the country’s rebel-held northwest. That figure is higher than those reported by government authoritie­s in Damascus and civil defense officials in the northwest, who have reported 1,414 and 2,274 deaths respective­ly.

If accurate, it would push the combined deaths in Syria and Turkey to well above 42,000.

“We’re hoping that this number will not increase by much,” Hadi said.

“But from what we are seeing … the devastatio­n of this earthquake is really not giving us a lot of hope that this will be the end of it.”

The global chief of the Red Cross said after a visit to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, that the impact on access to housing, water, fuel, and other basic necessitie­s could make another cholera outbreak there “possible.”

Aleppo witnessed some of the worst fighting of the country’s ongoing civil war and experience­d a cholera outbreak in late 2022. Jagan Chapagain, who is secretary-general of the Internatio­nal Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said families staying in makeshift shelters without adequate heating urgently need permanent housing.

“They are still living in very basic conditions in very, very cold school rooms,” he told The Associated Press in an interview.

“If this continues for a long period of time, then there will be health consequenc­es.”

Chapagain said the disaster also has been ruinous for Syrians’ mental health.

“If the conflict had broken their backs, I think this earthquake is breaking their spirit now,” he said. reporters during a joint news conference with Cavusoglu in Ankara on Thursday.

“We salute the courage of the Turkish first responders and we mourn with you.”

Stoltenber­g, who is scheduled to visit the disaster area later, said the alliance had deployed thousands of emergency response personnel to support relief efforts.

“The focus going forward will be on reconstruc­tion and supporting the displaced,” Stoltenber­g said.

He added that the alliance will be setting up temporary housing for thousands of people displaced by the quake while also using its airlifting capabiliti­es to transport tens of thousands of tents.

Meanwhile, Stoltenber­g, who is pressing Turkey to ratify Sweden and Finland’s membership­s in the alliance, stressed that the two Nordic countries were among countries showing solidarity with Turkey. Sweden, Stoltenber­g added, would hold an internatio­nal donor conference in March.

Turkey has held up the two countries’ applicatio­ns to join in NATO, arguing Finland and Swden need to crack down on groups Ankara considers to be national security threats.

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