Rescuers fight against odds in quake scramble

ADANA, Turkiye — Emergency crews raced on Tuesday to rescue survivors from the rubble of thousands of buildings brought down by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake and multiple aftershocks that struck eastern Turkiye and neighboring Syria, with the death toll rising to more than 5,000.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces of Turkiye hit by massive quakes. The decision was taken to ensure that search and rescue activities and subsequent studies can be carried out quickly, he said at a news conference.

Erdogan on Monday declared seven days of national mourning for the victims.

Countries around the world dispatched teams to assist in the rescue efforts, but a day after the earthquake struck the number of emergency personnel on the ground remained few.

Their efforts have been impeded by frigid temperatures and close to 200 aftershocks, which made the search through unstable structures perilous.

Nurgul Atay, a resident, told The Associated Press she could hear her mother's voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Antakya, the capital of Hatay Province, but that efforts to get into the ruins had been futile without any rescue crews and heavy equipment to help.

"If only we could lift the concrete slab we'd be able to reach her," she said. "My mother is 70 years old; she won't be able to withstand this for long."

Across Hatay Province, just southwest of the earthquake's epicenter, officials say as many as 1,500 buildings were destroyed and many people reported relatives being trapped under the rubble with no aid or rescue teams arriving.

In areas where teams worked, occasional cheers broke out through the night as survivors were brought out of the rubble. Thousands of people in the province sheltered in sports centers or fair halls, while others spent the night outside, huddled in blankets around fires.

The quake, which was centered in Turkiye's southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents of Damascus and Beirut rushing into the street and was felt as far away as Cairo.

The medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders confirmed on Tuesday that one of its workers was among the dead after his house in Syria's Idlib Province collapsed, and that others had lost family members.

"We are very shocked and saddened by the impact of this disaster on the thousands of people touched by it, including our colleagues and their families," said Sebastien Gay, the group's head of mission in Syria.

Gay said health facilities in northern Syria were overwhelmed with medical personnel working "around the clock to respond to the huge numbers of wounded".

In Turkiye, a navy ship docked on Tuesday at Hatay Province's port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to the nearby city of Mersin. Thick, black smoke rose from another area of the port, where firefighters have not yet been able to douse a fire that broke out among shipping containers that were toppled by the earthquake.

A Level-4 alarm has been issued by the Turkish government, requesting international assistance.

In northwest Syria, 4.1 million people rely on humanitarian assistance, mostly women and children.

A cholera outbreak is already affecting Syrian communities, coupled with the harsh winter weather. In the last quarter of 2022, little more than $370 million had been pledged for assistance out of a required total of just over $800 million.

Nations rocked

The earthquake that rocked the two countries was the biggest recorded worldwide by the US Geological Survey since one in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.

Another magnitude-5.6 earthquake struck central Turkiye on Tuesday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre said.

Monday's quake was the deadliest in Turkiye since one of similar magnitude in 1999 that killed more than 17,000.

Across the border in Syria, the quake piled more misery on a country that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade due to a civil war.

Strained medical centers quickly filled with injured people, rescue workers said. Some facilities had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organization.

Agencies - Xinhua