6:10 (CET)Death toll rises to 22,327 in Turkey
Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that the death toll has risen to 22,327 and the number of injured to 80,278.
•
6:01 (CET): Turkish minister leaves earthquake-hit Diyarbakır after protests
Turkey’s Minister of Justice and a lawmaker of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) were faced with furious protests when visiting the southeastern province of Diyarbakır (Amed) on Saturday.
Some 20 buildings collapsed in the country’s Kurdish-majority province after two major earthquakes on Monday, leading to the deaths of 256 people in the province so far.
Minister Bekir Bozdağ and lawmaker Oya Eronat were booed by the people when they tried to visit a collapsed building in the city centre. The minister left the region in a rush as protests continued.
•
6:00 (CET): UN warns the combined earthquake death toll can double
The combined death toll of the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria can double, a UN aid chief said on Saturday.
“I think it is difficult to estimate precisely as we need to get under the rubble but I’m sure it will double or more,” Martin Griffiths told Sky News.
•
5:38 (CET): Turkish prosecutors launch investigations into contractors who built collapsed buildings
Prosecutors in several provinces in Turkey have launched investigations into contractors who are held responsible of constructing buildings that quickly collapsed during Monday’s earthquakes.
Some 11 people have been detained in Diyarbakır, while arrest warrants for 29 were issued in Gaziantep. In Şanlıurfa, 11 people are also in custody, while the prosecutors in Adana ordered the detention of 62 people.
•
5:32 (CET): Turkish-backed rebels preventing humanitarian aid reaching Kurdish-controlled territories in Syria
The Turkey-backed Syrian rebels are blocking aid being transferred to earthquake victims in Syria’s Idlib and Afrin, the head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ media centre said on Friday.
“The denial of access to aid for those in need is recognized as a crime against humanity under international law, especially since thousands have died due to the lack of relief,” Farad Shami said on Twitter.
•
5:16 (CET): Turkey switches to online education in universities to use dormitories as shelters
The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Saturday that all universities in Turkey will resume education online until summer in order to use the dormitories nationwide as temporary shelters for earthquake victims.
•
5:10 (CET) Austrian, German rescuers halt rescue operations in Turkey due to security situation
The Austrian army and German rescue workers suspended their rescue operations in Turkey on Saturday, citing a worsening security situation, AFP News Agency reported.
“There have been clashes between groups,” a spokesman for the Austrian group told AFP without giving details. The spokesman said the Austrian troops were sheltering “in a base camp with other international organisations, awaiting instructions”.
The Austrian team had arrived in Hatay on Tuesday with 45 tonnes of equipment and rescued nine people from the rubble.
“In recent hours, the security situation in Hatay province has apparently changed,” said the German rescue team ISAR’s spokesman. “There are more and more reports of clashes between different factions, shots have also been fired.”
German teams “are remaining in the common base camp for now as a result” and will resume their search when Turkish civil protection authorities “believe it sufficiently safe.”
•
4:23 (CET): Rescuer buried under rubble in Turkey’s Hatay
📌#UPDATE | 4:23 (CET) A rescuer from #Turkey’s #Ayvalık Natural Disasters Search and Rescue team was buried under the rubble after remaining debris fell onto his team on Saturday in #Hatay, one of the most damaged provinces in the #earthquake https://t.co/nfKJuxUioP pic.twitter.com/QinSrYY4x7
— MedyaNews (@medyanews_) February 11, 2023
A rescuer from Turkey’s Ayvalık Natural Disasters Search and Rescue (ADAK) team was buried under the rubble after remaining debris fell onto his team on Saturday in Hatay, one of the most damaged provinces in the earthquake.
•
4:09 (CET): Search and rescue efforts end in northwest Syria
Rescue efforts for 6 February earthquake survivors in northwest Syria have come to an end on Saturday, the North Press agency reported.
On the same day, the Civil Defense (White Helmets, affiliated with the Syrian opposition) announced the start of removing bodies from under the rubble.
The death toll in the regions under the control of the Syrian opposition reached 2,166 and the number of injured reached 2,950.
The town of Jindires (Cindirês) in the west of Afrin and north of Aleppo has been marked as the most devastated area in Syria.
Jindires recorded 513 deaths and 831 injuries, with more than 200 buildings completely destroyed and around 500 partially damaged.
•
4:09 (CET): Pro-Kurdish HDP deputy co-chair protests Turkey’s debris removal operations
“There are still hundreds of thousands of people under the rubble. What’s the rush for?” pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s deputy co-chair Serhat Eren asked on Saturday, upon the start of debris removal operations in some earthquake regions of Turkey.
Earthquake survivors have also protested the start of the debris removal works, as the body integrity of the dead is impaired during these operations.
•
3:29 (CET): Turkey postpones legal cases due to State of Emergency
The Turkish government’s decree as a part of the State of Emergency (SOE) has suspended legal proceedings such as filing a lawsuit, enforcements, applications, complaints and objections from 6 February until 6 April.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared on Tuesday a three-month regional SOE in 10 cities hit by the earthquakes, and the Turkish parliament voted the declaration into force on Thursday afternoon.
The legislative decree regarding the measures taken as part of the SOE in the judiciary has come into effect on Saturday.
With the decree, a public prosecutor will be able to extend the four-day detention period by three days in cases of theft or looting.
Erdoğan recently said that the SOE would “give the state the opportunity to intervene against loan sharks” and looters.
•
2:22 (CET): Armenia-Turkey border gate opened after 35 years
The border gate between Armenia and Turkey has been opened after 35 years to deliver aid to the provinces affected by the 6 February earthquakes.
Humanitarian aid from #Armenia crossed the Margara bridge on #Armenia–#Turkey border heading to earthquake-stricken region. pic.twitter.com/7lwWrbE3fa
— Vahan Kostanyan (@VahanKostanyan) February 11, 2023
Humanitarian aid trucks departed Armenia for Turkey on Saturday to help the victims affected by the quakes.
Located in Iğdır province of Turkey, the Alican Border Gate connecting Turkey and Armenia was last used in the 1988 Armenian earthquake to send aid from Turkey to disaster areas.
•
01:41 (CET): Dead whales washed up in Cyprus possibly linked to earthquakes
Several dead whales that washed up on the north coast of Cyprus on Thursday and Friday probably died as a result of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, according to Yiannos Ioannou, an official from Cyprus’ Department of Fisheries.
“The fact that the mass beaching of whales occurred on coasts which are… near the epicentre of the quake in Turkey cannot be coincidence,” said Ioannou.
•
01:00 (CET): Death toll in Turkey climbs to 21,043
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the death toll from the earthquakes has increased to 21,043, while 80,097 people are injured.
•
12:58 (CET): Bodies buried in mass graves in epicentre of earthquakes
More than 3,000 people who lost their lives in the massive earthquakes in Turkey’s southern Kahramanmaraş (Mereş) province have been buried in mass graves so far.
The death toll in Kahramanmaraş, the epicentre province of the two major earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.6 that struck southeast Turkey and northern Syria on 6 February, is 5,000 so far. The bodies removed from the rubble are being buried in mass graves after identification.
In several of the cities affected by the earthquake, morgues are full and bodies are lying in hospital corridors waiting for identification.
•
The combined death toll in Turkey and Syria caused by two major earthquakes on Monday has reached 24,218 as of Saturday morning.
The death toll has passed the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) preliminary estimate of 20,000, while thousands are still buried under the rubble.
In Turkey, the confirmed deaths are at 20,665, while more than 80 thousand people have been injured.
Since Monday, more than 2,000 aftershocks rocked the more than 100,000 kilometre square area home to 13.5 million people in Turkey. Almost 100,000 people left the earthquake area with the help of state institutions, while many are travelling to other cities by their own means, some leaving behind their family members under the rubble. Over one million people are staying in temporary shelter areas.
The death toll in Turkey does not include thousands still under collapsed buildings, as rescue teams from Turkey and almost anywhere abroad have still been working resolutely to save the remaining victims. The number of deaths might rise exponentially once the rescue work in 10 provinces stops and the dead bodies will start to be removed.
Humanitarian aid has been flowing to Turkey’s south, while tents, containers, mobile toilets and heating appliances are still widely needed.
The Turkish media is flooded by news of people still being miraculously saved on the sixth day of the earthquake as well as severe problems in aid distribution commonly observed in every province. People being buried in mass graves and the pro-government media outlets censoring victims’ comments have been creating anger and frustration among the population.
Turkey’s Ministry of Justice have called for the establishment of Earthquake Crimes Investigation Bureaus to carry out investigations into the damaged buildings. The Turkish authorities on Friday caught the contractor of one of the buildings while he was trying to escape to Montenegro from Istanbul Airport. The Rönesans Residence in Hatay, built by the contractor, totally collapsed after the twin earthquakes, leaving some 1,000 people under the rubble. Another contractor, who built a now-collapsed building in the southern province of Adana causing the death of 50 people has allegedly escaped to Cyprus with his son.
In war-torn Syria, the death toll has reached 3,553 people, while more than 600 Syrian earthquake victims have been sent to their homeland from Turkey through the Cilvegözü border gate in the southern province of Hatay.
The border gate is currently the only entry point to send humanitarian aid to Syria. Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Friday evening that Turkish authorities had been trying to open two other entry points to Syria, after the Netherlands called on Ankara to open additional border gates to assist earthquake victims in Syria.
Syrian opposition groups, who do not need UN approval, have already secured Ankara’s approval to use two corridors between the two countries to deliver aid.
Jeremy Smith, the Middle East and North Africa country cluster manager for the British Red Cross, said the situation they were facing in Syria was a “nightmare scenario.”
According to the UN Refugee Agency, nearly five and half million people may be left homeless in Syria, where some people have been already displaced 20 times since the start of the civil war 12 years ago.
The Syrian state media reported that the Syrian cabinet had given a go-ahead for delivering aid to all parts of the country, including areas controlled by rebel groups.
