February 10, 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake news

Our live coverage of the quake and rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria has moved here.

The number of people killed following Monday’s devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has reached at least 23,831, according to authorities.

The death toll in Turkey rose to 20,318, with 80,052 reported injuries, according to the country’s disaster agency. 

In Syria, the total number of those killed stands at 3,513, including 2,166 deaths in rebel-held areas in the northwest of the country, according to volunteer organization Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets.

Syrian state media also reported 1,347 deaths in government-controlled parts of Syria.

Rescuers wrap the first brother in a thermal blanket as seen on Turkish state media TRT.

Three brothers were rescued from the wreckage of a five-story apartment building 120 hours after the earthquake struck, Turkish state media TRT reported Friday.  

The second brother is freed from the rubble.

The network showed footage of the third brother being rescued. He was wrapped in a thermal cover and was sent to the hospital for further medical evaluation, it said. 

The third brother is freed.

According to TRT, the rescue team worked for nine hours at the location in Antakya – the main city of hard-hit Hatay province – digging down to the second floor. The team rescued the first brother at the 117th hour and the second one at the 119th.

Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross called for more access to all parts of northern Syria following the deadly earthquake.

“What is most important now is that we gain access to all parts of northern Syria to help people who need our urgent support,” Spoljaric said in a statement Friday. “Impartial humanitarian assistance should never be hindered, nor politicized.”

Some background: The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit rebel-held areas in northern and northwestern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition groups and the Syrian government.

Earlier Friday, CNN reported that the government approved sending aid into rebel territory in the northwest area, but no timeline was provided.

The volunteer organization Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, announced the end of its search and rescue operations for survivors in rebel-controlled areas in the north and northwest following the earthquakes that hit the country and Turkey on Monday.

The group said it believes no one trapped under the rubble is still alive after 108 hours of searching.

However, it is now searching for the bodies of those under collapsed buildings.

According to the statement, many women and children were among the dead people in the most affected areas, including in the towns of Jindires and Haram in north Syria.

A 16-year-old boy was pulled alive from the rubble of a destroyed building in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras 119 hours after the devastating earthquake hit the country and Syria.

In dramatic scenes shown live on CNN affiliate, CNN Turk, Kamil Can was brought to the surface with a smile on his face. He appeared to be in OK condition. 

Rescuers said they had been prompted to search the location after hearing his voice come from below the wreckage.

Kamil was taken away on a stretcher, looking alert, to waiting relatives who could be seen kissing him with joy.

Monday’s deadly earthquake has left millions of people homeless in Turkey and Syria in the middle of winter, according to aid organizations, and survivors are finding refuge in temporary shelters amid freezing temperatures.

In Syria alone, approximately 5.37 million people will need shelter assistance, according to a preliminary estimate from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,

There are still glimmers of hope for survivors under the rubble. On the fifth day since the earthquake, teams were able to rescue a mother and her two daughters, as well as another family of six in Turkey. But the pace of rescues has slowed.

Meanwhile, families are grieving as they begin to bury their loved ones. Salma Salazar, who lost members of her family, told CNN her family is “very heartbroken.”

Here’s what you need to know:

A record-breaking quake: Monday’s disaster was the deadliest earthquake to strike Turkey in more than 80 years. The quake has left more than 23,000 people dead, which is more than those killed in Japan’s Fukushima disaster of 2011.

Government intervention: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that the country’s government will pay citizens’ rent for one year if they do not wish to stay in tents. He also vowed penalties for “abusers” involved in crime during his declared state of emergency. He’s reported attacks on businesses and robberies in regions impacted by the earthquake. Turkish Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdag said Friday that judicial investigations have started for builders in regions affected by the quake, according to Turkey’s state media Anadolu. 

Aid efforts: Erdogan said more than 141,000 rescue personnel are working on the ground in 10 earthquake-struck provinces in Turkey. And according to the White House, the US will be “ramping up” its assistance to Turkey and Syria.

But in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad criticized Western countries Friday for having “no regard for the human condition.” His comment is in line with statements heard from government officials and Syria’s state-run media, who have pinned the lack of humanitarian aid and hindered rescue equipment on US and EU sanctions. On Friday the Syrian government approved sending aid into rebel-held territory in the northwest of the country, but the aid group International Organization for Migration tells CNN they haven’t received any specifics from officials on the announcement.

While Turkey is no stranger to strong earthquakes, Monday’s disaster is the deadliest to strike the country in more than 80 years.

Here’s what we know:

Monday’s deadly earthquakes left thousands of people in Turkey and Syria homeless in the middle of winter. They are now finding refuge in temporary shelters.

Here’s a look:

Syrians gather at a shelter in Antakya, southeastern Turkey, on Friday.

An aerial view shows a tent city set up by Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority in Kahramanmaras.

Syrian children look out of the window of a tent at an emergency shelter in the northwestern Idlib province of Syria on February 7.

Volunteers prepare food for internally displaced people at the Yeni Hatay Stadium camp in Hatay, Turkey, on Friday.

Earthquake survivors settle in the tent city set up near Hatay Stadium in Turkey on Friday.

Click here for more photos from the region devastated by the earthquake.

More than 5 million people in Syria may have been left homeless following the earthquake that struck the country and Turkey on Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday.

“UNHCR is focusing very much on shelter and relief items, ensuring that collective centers that displaced have gone to have adequate facilities, as well as tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats, winter clothing and so on,” said Sivanka Dhanapala, a UNHCR representative in Syria.

The United Nations agency said 6.8 million people were already displaced internally within the country since the start of the civil war that ripped through Syria in 2011.

“All this, of course, impacts the access for aid,” Dhanapala said. “Roads have been damaged and that hampers us trying to reach people. It’s been very, very difficult.” 

Based on “a preliminary estimate,” the refugee organization said “5.37 million people affected by the quake will need shelter assistance in the whole of Syria.”

“That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement,” according to Dhanapala.

The United States is “ramping up” assistance to Turkey and Syria following the catastrophic earthquake that struck on Monday, the White House told reporters Friday. 

John Kirby, the White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, said the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has already deployed a disaster assistance and response team to Turkey.

Two additional urban search and rescue teams are also “conducting operations in support of Turkish rescue efforts” in the hardest-hit areas of Turkey, for a sum-total of 200 personnel, assisted with specialized equipment and canine support dogs, according to Kirby. He said the US is deploying assistance teams via Blackhawk helicopters from Incirlik Air Force Base in Southern Turkey.

On Thursday, USAID announced $85 million in funding for the region to provide “emergency food and shelter for refugees and newly displaced people, winter supplies to help families brave the cold, critical health care services to provide trauma support, safe drinking water to prevent disease, and hygiene and sanitation assistance to keep people safe and healthy.”

In Syria, Kirby said, humanitarian partners are “urgently scaling up response efforts,” including the launch of charter flights carrying medical supplies, the distribution of hot meals and the deployment of 20 truckloads of medicine and food into the country, as a way to “underscore that US sanctions will not prevent or inhibit prohibiting humanitarian assistance in Syria.” 

He pointed to a license from the US Treasury that provides additional authorizations for humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people. 

The death toll following the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week has climbed to 23,726, according to authorities.

In Turkey, the death toll has risen to at least 20,213 with 80,052 others reported injured, according to Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca.

The total number of deaths in Syria stands at 3,384 — including 2,166 in rebel-held areas in the northwest, according to the White Helmets civil defense group — and 1,347 deaths in government-controlled parts of Syria, according to Syrian state media.

The number of injured people in Syria across all affected territories stands at 5,245, with 2,295 in government-controlled areas and 2,950 in rebel-held areas.

A man walks through the debris of collapsed buildings in Hatay, Turkey, on Thursday.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at least 20,213 people were killed and 80,052 injured in the earthquake that struck 10 provinces in Turkey this week, according to Turkey’s state media Anadolu. 

He said citizens rescued from the wreckage have been transferred to provinces outside of earthquake-struck regions.

Digital photos of those whose identities are unknown are being uploaded to “special software for matching,” Koca said.

“I hope that we will reach the identity information of most of the people,” he added.

The total death toll in Turkey and Syria surpassed 22,000 on Friday.

While the Syrian government has said it will allow aid deliveries to rebel-held areas of the country, the head of a UN aid agency tells CNN they haven’t received any specifics from officials.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has been working to aid those impacted by the devastating Turkey-Syria earthquake, has not received any specific places or times to enter the territories, said António Vitorino, the organization’s director-general.

The Syrian government said earlier Friday it would allow aid into rebel-held areas if it does not go into “terrorist” hands. Vitorino called that a “political statement.”

He said all of the IOM’s aid goes to those in need.

“We do not make any discrimination,” he told CNN’s Lynda Kinkade.

More on aid deliveries to the area: The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and the Syrian government, led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of killing his own people.

Two UN convoys carrying aid have entered the rebel-held northwest through the only authorized border crossing in Turkey, while Assad’s government has received planeloads of aid from countries around the world.

A mother and her two daughters were rescued alive on the fifth day of the earthquake that struck 10 provinces on Monday, according to CNN Turk.

The mother was rescued in the 111th hour and her two daughters were rescued back-to-back in the 112th hour in the hard-hit city of Kahramanmaras, according to CNN Turk’s reporting. 

The Syrian government has approved sending aid into rebel-held territory in the northwest of the country, a statement said Friday, but officials provided no specific timeline. 

Syrian officials have repeatedly said they are “ready” to send help to the territories, but no aid from the government has reportedly entered the rebel-held areas since the earthquake on Monday.

More background: The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and the Syrian government, led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of killing his own people.

Two UN convoys carrying aid have entered the rebel-held northwest through the only authorized border crossing in Turkey, while Assad’s government has received planeloads of aid from countries around the world.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said on Wednesday that any aid Syria receives must go through the capital Damascus.

“The Syrian state is ready to allow aid to enter into all regions, provided that it does not reach terrorist armed groups,” he said.

Rescuers carry 27-year-old survivor Rabia Ofkeli in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Hatay, Turkey, on Friday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said more than 141,000 rescue personnel are working on the ground in 10 earthquake-struck provinces in Turkey. 

“We have more than 141,000 personnel, including foreign teams, working on the ground in 10 provinces. The Disaster Management Agency and other institutions are offering tents, containers, and prefabricated buildings, so that they can meet the needs quickly,” he said during a speech in the city of Malatya.

Erdogan said that Turkish institutions and organizations are providing hot meals to relief teams for the survivors of the earthquake through mobile kitchens and soup kitchens.

Erdogan also said those who had their own homes destroyed will receive 5,000 Turkish Lira ($265.50) per month in aid and those who have had rentals destroyed will get 2,000 Turkish Lira ($106.20) per month.

Rescue teams search for people as cranes remove debris from destroyed buildings in Antakya, southeastern Turkey, on Friday.

Monday’s earthquake and aftershocks in Turkey and Syria have left more than 22,000 dead. The tragedy has surpassed numbers from other deadly earthquakes, including Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011.

Families are grieving as they begin to bury their loved ones across the two countries.

People mourn at a cemetery where they bury their loved ones who died in Monday's earthquake, in Adiyaman, Turkey, on Friday, February 10.

Body bags are seen on the ground outside of a morgue in Hatay, Turkey, on Friday.

Mourners attend a funeral in Famagusta, Cyprus, on Friday of seven Cypriot students who were killed in the powerful earthquake that hit Turkey.

Relatives of Syrians killed in the earthquake in Turkey receive their bodies at the border in the northern Aleppo province on Friday.

People bury their loved ones who died in the earthquake in Adiyaman, Turkey, on Friday.

Ahmad and his wife Fatma Colakoglu stand outside of their destroyed house in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on Friday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to the press after visiting a tent city in Adiyaman, Turkey, on Friday.

While President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was facing the strongest opposition yet to his presidency in this upcoming election, the devastating earthquake could change the electoral equation for the Turkish strongman, who hopes an upcoming election will extend his rule well into a third decade, analysts say.

Many of the 10 hardest-hit provinces of the country’s south have traditionally supported him and his AK Party. Erdogan has been visiting impacted areas, consoling victims and pledging to rebuild the thousands of flattened homes. But there is disgruntlement with the government’s response in those areas, where some people complain that scores of bodies are yet to be collected, causing the stench of death to spread.

For Turkey’s rulers, quakes have been game changers in the past: In what later became a defining moment for Erdogan’s ascension to power, the 1999 quake – and the slow relief efforts that followed – only added to the sense of disillusionment many felt toward the nationalist, secularist state in power at the time, analysts say.

After the 1999 earthquake, the state “collapsed like a house of cards,” Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told CNN on Thursday.

This time around, the Turkish opposition is already speaking out about the government’s perceived shortcomings in dealing with the tragedy. Following a nationwide restriction on social media after the earthquake, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said, “This insane palace government cut off social media communication.”

“As a result, crying for help is less heard,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “We know everything you’re trying to hide.”

With additional reporting by Yusuf Gezer in Iskenderun, Turkey.

John Morrison of the Fairfax County Fire Department in Virginia is one of over 150 search-and-rescue members deployed to Turkey through the United States Agency for International Development. His team, which has been around the world to assist with disasters, is currently searching the entire city of Adiyaman for earthquake survivors.

While his team has not found anyone alive in the rubble yet, he said he has previously seen victim rescues after even more than a week following an earthquake.

Since the quake in Turkey struck when many citizens were asleep, Morrison said that survivors could be wrapped up in blankets from their beds to help keep them warm in the cold temperatures.

Hypothermia is a big concern, he said, but his team has doctors ready to treat patients.

While it is a “widespread disaster,” search-and-rescue members try to whittle down the task by conferring with local authorities and people on the street to see if they’ve heard any noise from under the rubble, he said.