Death toll passes 9,600 in Syria and Turkey after earthquake

The number of deaths after earthquake in the south of Turkey and northwest of Syria this Wednesday, 8. There are more than 7,100 in Turkey and more than 2,500 in Syria. The number of victims has been escalating in the last few hours, as the work to rescue buried people and searches for the missing are carried out. On Tuesday, the 7th, the World Health Organization came to estimate that the tragedy impacted 23 million people in both countries, including 1.4 million children at risk. According to the Associated Press, the death toll in Turkey stands at 7,108. In government-controlled areas of Syria, it is 2,054. The news agency also points out that the territory under the command of the rebels accounts for 1,280 dead and 2,600 wounded. Families in the south of Turkey and Syria spent a second night in the freezing cold on Wednesday as overwhelmed rescuers rushed to pull people out of the rubble two days after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck. At Turkey , dozens of bodies, some covered with blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital in Hatay province. Many in the disaster zone slept in their cars or on the streets under blankets, afraid to return to buildings shaken by the quake. The earthquake was considered the deadliest since 1999 in Turkey. the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even claimed that the tremor was the worst in 84 years, compared to another that occurred in 1939.

The earthquake has increased pressure on humanitarian organizations and Western countries to help the Syrian population, especially in the rebel-held zone of Idlib in the north of the country. Countries such as France, Germany and the United States have promised to help Syrian victims, but without sending immediate help. Helping the Syrian population “in the political context of a regime that unleashed a civil war that lasted ten years” is complicated, assessed Laurence Boone, French Secretary of State for Europe before the French Lower House. “Syria remains an obscure zone from a legal and diplomatic point of view”, evaluates the program director for Syria of the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Marc Schakal, asking that aid be sent “as soon as possible”. Schakal fears that local and international NGOs will be overwhelmed in a country devastated by almost 12 years of civil war in which several sides are fighting – government forces, rebels, jihadists and Kurds, among others – and troops from several foreign countries are mobilized.

*With information from Reuters, AFP and EFE