Turkey's earthquake claims 35,000 lives in worst disaster in 100 years says Erdogan

The president of Turkey has said the earthquake which struck last week has now claimed more than 35,000 lives in his country’s worst natural disaster for 100 years. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced there were 35,418 deaths in the quake.

The massive Erzincan earthquake in 1939 resulted in the deaths of around 33,000 people.

Mr Erdoğan said there had been 105,505 people injured as a result of the quakes centred around Kahramanmaras. Almost 3,700 deaths have been confirmed in neighbouring Syria, taking the combined toll in both countries to more than 39,000.

The Turkish president was speaking in Ankara after a five-hour Cabinet meeting held at the headquarters of disaster agency AFAD.

Magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes struck nine hours apart on February 6 in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria.

The quakes affected 10 provinces in Turkey which are home to some 13.5 million people with a large area affected in northwest Syria home to millions.

Much of the water system in the quake-hit region has not been working with Turkey’s health minister saying samples from dozens of points in the network showing it is unsuitable to drink.

In the Turkish port city of Iskenderun, displaced families have sheltered in train carriages since last week.

While many have left in recent days for nearby camps or other parts of Turkey, dozens of people were still in the trains on Tuesday.

It comes as a first Saudi aid plane, carrying 35 tonnes of food, landed in Syrian government-held Aleppo. Getting aid to the country’s rebel-held Idlib province has been especially complicated.

Until a deal struck on Monday between the UN and the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, the global body had only been allowed to deliver aid to the area through a single border crossing with Turkey, or via government territory.

The death toll from the quake is almost certain to rise as search teams find more bodies and the window for locating survivors closes.

However, more than 200 hours after the quake struck, teacher Emine Akgul was pulled from an apartment building in Antakya by a mining search and rescue team, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

In Adiyaman province, rescuers reached Muhammed Cafer Cetin, 18, with medics giving him an IV with fluids before attempting a dangerous extraction from a building which crumbled further as rescuers battled to release him.

Many in Turkey have blamed faulty construction for the vast devastation. Mr Erdoğan said 47,000 buildings, which contained 211,000 residences, had either been destroyed or were so badly damaged as to require demolition.

He said of ongoing rescue efforts: “We will continue our work until we get our last citizen out of the destroyed buildings.”

Mr Erdoğan announced his government planned to start building 30,000 houses next month.

He said: “Our aim is to complete the construction of high quality and safe buildings in a year to meet the housing need in the entire earthquake zone.”

The quake, which was centred north of the Turkish provincial capital of Gaziantep, was felt as far away as Cairo. It sent people in Damascus rushing into the street and jolted awake people in their beds in Beirut.

The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in a similarly powerful earthquake that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.

source: express.co.uk