[튀르키예·시리아 대지진]
Turkiye-Syria death toll exceeds 10,000
On the afternoon of the 6th (local time), Jindires in northern Syria. Khalil al-Shami, 34, was digging with his hands through a pile of concrete to find his brother’s family in the wreckage of a 5-story apartment building collapsed by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake. Most of all, he was worried about his sister-in-law and the baby that was to be born one day before his due date. Amid the cement fragments and dust, I could see the legs of a woman who seemed to be her sister-in-law and a baby with an umbilical cord. A nephew was born in the cold ruins.
The nephew, trapped in the middle of a disaster as soon as he was born, was picked up by rescuers with his arms and legs drooping. His face and back were bruised, but he breathed and moved his limbs. People who saw the baby rescued threw blankets at them. Unfortunately, all other family members, including the mother, died, the Associated Press reported on the 7th. Shami, who cut her nephew’s umbilical cord, said, “My sister-in-law was supposed to give birth the next day, but it seems the shock of the earthquake gave birth.”
As of 2:30 p.m. on the 8th (8:30 p.m. Korean time), about 11,200 people have been confirmed dead from the earthquake that occurred in Turkey and Syria early in the morning on the 6th. The death toll could rise even steeper as the golden time for rescues, which lasts up to three days, is coming to an end. UNICEF estimates the child death toll could be in the thousands. There are many children who were narrowly rescued but whose identities cannot be identified because they lost their parents.
The dead children are pushed out of the priority list and it is difficult to even recover the body. Abdurrahman Genchai, who pulled the dead child out of the rubble of a building in Gaziantep Nurdau, Turkey, said, “We rolled up the child in a red blanket and went door to door looking for someone to bury it, but failed. The morgue is also full, and dozens of corpses are left in front of it,” he told the Washington Post (WP) on the 7th.
Earthquake death toll exceeds 11,200
Bodies wrapped in cloth are scattered all over the road
“Surviving children will also suffer great trauma”
23 million victims… Verb risk is high
As infrastructure such as roads were destroyed by the earthquake and lack of equipment overlapped, local residents were digging up rubble with their bare hands to rescue them, foreign media reported. As the cold weather overlaps, the sacrifices of children with weak survival skills are rapidly increasing.
“Most of the dead in the family are children,” a member of the White Helmets, a civil defense force led by the rebels, who is leading the rescue operation at a time when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime has virtually lost control of the situation, told the WP. Another member of the crew saw a girl crushed under the building and held a conversation for four hours, holding the rubble from collapsing with a wooden block, but eventually had to leave due to a flood of calls for help from elsewhere. He expressed despair, saying, “Even if there are survivors, they cannot be saved.”
Miraculous survival news also came intermittently. In Kahramanmaras, Turkey, three-year-old Arif Khan was rescued two days after the quake struck, trapped under a concrete roof and twisted steel bars. His father, who was rescued before Khan, burst into tears of emotion as his young son was loaded into the ambulance. A 33-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter were rescued 44 hours after the quake struck, and a 2-year-old child trapped under a sofa was also rescued 43 hours after the earthquake, according to Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.
UNICEF spokesperson Joe English told the New York Times (NYT), “There is no child in the earthquake-affected area who is not physically and psychologically affected by this disaster.”
A child with a short life… Even the survivors are devastated On the 7th (local time), residents wrap a child who died after being crushed by the rubble of a building at a cemetery in Aleppo, one of the Syrian earthquake-stricken areas, by wrapping it in white cloth and burying it (above photo). On the same day, in Malatya, Turkey, residents who were searching for family members and acquaintances who were buried under the rubble of a building sit with a devastated expression on a pile of snow-covered buildings. Relief personnel and supplies are coming from all over the world to the earthquake-stricken area, but it is difficult to access the site due to the collapse of roads due to the earthquake. Malatya = AP NewsisThe Wall Street Journal (WSJ) described the horrors of the earthquake, saying, “Dozens of survivors covered in gray dust are limping like ghosts through the wreckage of an apartment building (to find family or acquaintances).” When a woman cried that her two sons, aged 11 and 17, were found dead, hugging each other, a neighbor who was looking for her mother said, “I envy you for even finding a body.”
The NYT reported that in Antakya, Turkey, where the damage was particularly severe, ambulances were unable to reach as people flocked to search for their families, causing chaos. In the photos taken in Hatay, there were 5 or 6 corpses wrapped in cloth lying all over the road.
The affected area is large, but as the rescue operation by the authorities is slow, the families of the missing are resorting to self-rescue measures. On social media, a post followed by announcing his location and situation and requesting rescue. A teenage boy trapped in a collapsed house said, “God, help us” with tears in his eyes and a trembling voice when he heard a sharp scream somewhere while filming the video.
The U.S. Geological Survey predicted on the 8th that the death toll from the quake could reach up to 100,000. Displaced people in Turkey and Syria affected by the earthquake are expected to reach 23 million. “No tent, no stove, nothing, but she is wet from the rain and shivering with her children,” said one Turkiye resident. They will die from the cold, not from starvation or an earthquake.”
Citizens of Turkey are criticizing the government for introducing a so-called ‘earthquake tax’ (special communication tax) in 1999 to use it to prevent disasters and improve emergency services. AFP news agency reported that citizens said, “For the first 12 hours after the disaster, no rescue team arrived on the scene. Where was my tax money being spent?”
Ankara =
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.