Turkiye starts probing contractors

ANTAKYA, Turkiye — Turkish authorities are targeting contractors suspected of being linked with buildings that collapsed in earthquakes on Feb 6 as rescuers continue to find more survivors in the rubble, and as the World Health Organization warns that the pain will ripple forward.

The death toll from the magnitude-7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkiye and northern Syria rose above 37,000 on Monday, Reuters reported.

A week after the earthquakes, the focus turned to the investigation.

Turkiye's Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people were being investigated for their suspected responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes. While the quakes were powerful, many in Turkiye blame faulty construction for exacerbating the devastation.

Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in the province of Gaziantep on suspicion of cutting down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu News Agency said. The justice ministry said three people were arrested, seven others were detained and another seven were barred from leaving Turkiye.

Rescuers reported finding more survivors amid increasingly long odds. Thermal cameras were used as crews demanded silence to hear those trapped.

Sibel Kaya, 40, was rescued in southern Gaziantep about 170 hours after the first quake struck the region, the report said. Rescue workers in the city of Kahramanmaras had also made contact with three survivors, believed to be a mother, daughter and baby, in the ruins of a building.

In hard-hit Hatay Province, a 50-year-old woman who appeared badly injured was carried out by crews in the town of Iskenderun. Similar rescues in the province saved two other women, one of them pregnant, the broadcasters TRT and HaberTurk reported.

HaberTurk showed a 6-year-old boy rescued from his wrecked home in the town of Adiyaman. An exhausted rescuer removed his surgical mask and took deep breaths as several women cried in joy.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca posted a video of a young girl in a navy blue pullover who was found alive. "There is always hope," he said.

Those were the rare exceptions.

Hatay's airport reopened on Sunday after its runway was repaired, and military and commercial aircraft ferried in supplies and were to take away evacuees.

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the pain would continue, calling the disaster an "unfolding tragedy that's affecting millions".

"The compounding crises of conflict, COVID-19, cholera, economic decline and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll."

WHO experts were waiting to enter northwestern Syria, "where we have been told the impact is even worse", he said.

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border on Sunday, said Syrians were "looking for international help that hasn't arrived".

'Abandoned Syrians'

"We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. My duty and our obligation are to correct this failure as fast as we can."

Many Syrians criticized the US blockade surrounding their country from every direction, which has badly hampered rescue work and led to high casualties.

On Thursday the US Department of the Treasury issued Syria General License 23, which, according to its announcement, "authorizes for 180 days all transactions related to earthquake relief that would be otherwise prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations".

Thuraya al-Saeedi, a displaced Syrian living in the Sarada camp in southern Lebanon, who lost four of her relatives in the city of Aleppo, said the decision had come too late.

Experts said the announcement softening sanctions "to support earthquake relief efforts" proved the falsehood of the country's claims that its sanctions do not target humanitarian aid to the quake-hit country.

Kamal al-Jafa, a Syrian political expert, said that if previous US claims were correct it would not have decided to ease the sanctions for six months. "This decision indicates that Washington knows the sanctions imposed on the Syrian people were unjust and led to worsening the living conditions over the past few years."

Some experts said Washington's decision is far from enough to alleviate the suffering of Syrians.

Agencies via Xinhua