Sanliurfa, Turkey, Feb 7 (AFP\/APP): Rescuers in Turkey and Syria battled frigid cold Tuesday in a race against time to find survivors under buildings flattened by a earthquake that killed more than 6,200 people.<\/p>\n
Tremors that inflicted more suffering on a border area, already plagued by conflict, left people on the streets burning debris to try to stay warm as international aid began to arrive.<\/p>\n
But some extraordinary survival tales have emerged, including a newborn baby pulled alive from rubble in Syria, still tied by her umbilical cord to her mother who died in Monday’s quake.<\/p>\n
“We heard a voice while we were digging,” Khalil al-Suwadi, a relative, told AFP. “We cleared the dust and found the baby with the umbilical cord (intact) so we cut it and my cousin took her to hospital.”<\/p>\n
The infant is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest of whom were killed in the rebel-held town of Jindayris.<\/p>\n
The 7.8-magnitude quake struck Monday as people slept, flattening thousands of structures, trapping an unknown number of people and potentially impacting millions.<\/p>\n
Whole rows of buildings collapsed, leaving some of the heaviest devastation near the quake’s epicentre between the Turkish cities of Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras.<\/p>\n
The destruction led to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declaring Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 southeastern provinces.<\/p>\n
– ‘Children are freezing’ –<\/p>\n
Dozens of nations like the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have begun to arrive by airplane.<\/p>\n
Yet people in some of the hardest-hit areas said they felt like they had been left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n
“I can’t get my brother back from the ruins. I can’t get my nephew back. Look around here. There is no state official here, for God’s sake,” said Ali Sagiroglu in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras.<\/p>\n
“For two days we haven’t seen the state around here… Children are freezing from the cold,” he added.<\/p>\n
A winter storm has compounded the misery by rendering many roads — some of them damaged by the quake — almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams that stretch for kilometres in some regions.<\/p>\n
The cold rain and snow are a risk both for people forced from their homes — who took refuge in mosques, schools or even bus shelters — and survivors buried under debris.<\/p>\n
“It is now a race against time,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.<\/p>\n
“We have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable,” he added.<\/p>\n
– 23 million could be affected –<\/p>\n
The latest toll showed 4,544 people killed in Turkey and 1,712 in Syria, for a combined total of 6,256 fatalities.<\/p>\n
There are fears that the toll will rise inexorably, with WHO officials estimating up to 20,000 may have died.<\/p>\n
WHO warned that up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquake and urged nations to rush help to the disaster zone.<\/p>\n
The Syrian Red Crescent appealed to Western countries to lift sanctions and provide aid as President Bashar al-Assad’s government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international relief efforts.<\/p>\n
Washington and the European Commission said on Monday that humanitarian programmes supported by them were responding to the destruction in Syria.<\/p>\n
The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO also said it was ready to provide assistance after two sites listed on its World Heritage list in Syria and Turkey sustained damage.<\/p>\n
In addition to the damage to Aleppo’s old city and the fortress in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, UNESCO said at least three other World Heritage sites could be affected.<\/p>\n
Much of the quake-hit area of northern Syria has already been decimated by years of war and aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russia forces that destroyed homes, hospitals and clinics.<\/p>\n
Residents in the quake-devastated town of Jandairis in northern Syria used their bare hands and pickaxes to for survivors, as that was all they had to get the job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sanliurfa, Turkey, Feb 7 (AFP\/APP): Rescuers in Turkey and Syria battled frigid cold Tuesday in a race against time to find survivors under buildings flattened by a earthquake that killed more than 6,200 people. Tremors that inflicted more suffering on a border area, already plagued […]<\/p>\n
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