February 13, 2023 Over 36,000 dead from quake in Turkey and Syria

The Syria Civil Defense volunteer organization, known as the “White Helmets,” has declared an official mourning period in the rebel-controlled areas in north and northwestern Syria following the catastrophic earthquake that struck the country and parts of Turkey last week.

The group said they will fly the White Helmets flags at half-staff for seven days, starting Monday until February 20, to mourn the victims of the earthquake in both countries, according to a post on Twitter. 

The White Helmets also said the operation “to recover bodies of the deceased in several places in the countryside of Idlib and Aleppo on the eighth day since the deadly earthquake struck the region” would continue.

More than 36,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands have been injured in Syria and Turkey, officials said.

Some background: The volunteer organization, which formed in late 2012 during the Syrian civil war, operates in parts of rebel-controlled areas. The group’s main tasks are medical evacuation, urban search and rescue in response to bombings, evacuation of civilians from dangerous places and other tasks.

Chef Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen.

Survivors are struggling to cope with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago, according to Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen.

Andres is in Adana, where his charity organization is providing food assistance.

“The devastation is something like we cannot still understand,” he said, describing the quake as one for the ages.

The renowned Spanish chef explained resources are extremely limited and it’s difficult to get to all of the cities and towns impacted by the quake. In Adana, people are too afraid to go back to their homes and are sheltering outdoors in freezing temperatures, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The food provided by his organization not only fills people’s bodies but “gives them warmth in these very cold nights of Turkey.”

He added that he feels his charity is “only just putting a finger in one hole of hundreds and hundreds of holes,” in Turkey.

More than 36,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria one week ago, officials said.

How you can help: Donate to victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria here.

Last week’s catastrophic earthquake demonstrated how critical it is to get more humanitarian aid crossings into Syria, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday.

The single crossing from Turkey approved to transport UN aid, the Bab al-Hawa crossing, had been inaccessible for days after the earthquake.

Price said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia should forget politics and do what is right.

In response to news that Assad finally agreed to open two crossings into Syria, according to a new statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, Price said he hopes the Syrian president “is serious about this.”

“It hasn’t been only Russia that’s been opposed to this in the past,” Price said. “If the regime is serious about this, and if the regime is willing to put those words into action, that would be a good thing for the Syrian people,” he added.

A member of the White Helmets looks through a notebook found in the rubble.

As hope fades for survivors from last week’s quake that devastated northwest Syria, a notebook found in the rubble recalls happier days.

On Monday, the humanitarian organization, The White Helmets, tweeted images that memorialized a time when the region wasn’t ravaged by a decade-long civil war.  

In one entry, the author remembers celebrating Eid back home with friends and loved ones. Those moments of joy are fleeting ones. 

The author describes the joy of Eid as “if it was never-ending.” 

The author writes of longing for what they call moments that have long been lost.

Eid now is no longer a day of laughter, but a day of tears and longing. 

Rescuers hope to find the author of the notebook.

Compounding devastation: For Syrians, the earthquake is just the latest in a decade-long series of tragedies. 

CNN reported, most of the casualties were in a region already struggling to rebuild vital infrastructure heavily damaged by aerial bombardment during the country’s civil war, which the UN estimates to have claimed the lives of at least 300,000 civilians since 2011. 

Half of northwestern Syria’s 4.6 million population had been forced out of their homes by the conflict, with 1.7 million now living in tents and refugee camps in the region, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. Last year, the agency reported 3.3 million Syrians in the area were food insecure. 

“It’s a crisis within a crisis,” says Leena Zahra, a Syrian American humanitarian worker focused on increasing mental health access to globally displaced people. “This tragedy will impact children, entire families, some that have been displaced over 20 times. It’s just going to be adding on to the psychological impact that they’ve already faced.”  

 The United Nations welcomed President Bashar al-Assad’s decision on Monday to open “the two crossing points of Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra’ee from Türkiye to north-west Syria for an initial period of three months to allow for the timely delivery of humanitarian aid.”

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.

Starting last Thursday, the UN was able to get the first aid convoy into Syria from Turkey since the earthquake struck, through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. Since then, additional UN aid convoys entered via the same border crossing. 

At least 1,362 children in Turkey were separated from their parents after a massive earthquake struck a week ago, according to the country’s Minister of Family and Social Services Derya Yanik.

To date, 369 have been reunited with their families, the minister said. Another 792 children are in hospitals and 201 children are in “institutions affiliated with our ministry.”

Yanik said that 291 of the children remain unidentified – and the first step is to figure out who they are so they can be reunited with any family members who are still alive.

CNN’s Ziya Dikbaş and Gokce Katkici contributed to this post.

A person walks in the corridor of a hospital as others sit, in the aftermath of an earthquake, in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on February 10.

At least 19,300 earthquake victims are under treatment in hospitals in Turkey, according to Turkey’s Health Ministry. 

They include 3,636 people who are in intensive care units, the ministry reported Monday. 

At least 8,851 patients had to have surgery, according to the ministry, and some of them are already discharged.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (right) met with United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths today in Damascus, Syria.

Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Monday and discussed the need for aid.

Syrian state media, SANA, reports they talked about “urgent” humanitarian needs following the earthquake. 

“The President also stressed the necessity for the international efforts to concentrate on reconstructing infrastructure in Syria as this issue is an urgent need for the stability of the Syrian people and the return of Syrian refugees to their cities and regions,” SANA reported.

What the UN is saying: Griffiths said earlier Monday that the UN will help move aid from government-controlled regions in Syria to the rebel-held northwest of the country.

“We’ll have assistance moving from here to the northwest. But the northwest is only one part of Syria as you know,” Griffiths said.

A total of 58 interagency UN trucks carrying aid have crossed into northwestern Syria through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing from Turkey since Thursday, according to information provided by UNOCHA spokesperson Madevi Sun-Suon.

Remember: 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 Assad’s government, who is accused of killing his own people. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad says any aid it receives must go through the capital Damascus.

CNN’s Mostafa Salem, Celine Alkhaldi and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this post.

A 10-year-old girl named Ayca Ceplin was rescued alive Monday in the 185th hour of Turkey’s earthquake, according to CNN’s sister network CNN Turk.

Ayca was pulled from the rubble of the Ebrar apartment complex in Kahramanmaras, CNN Turk reported.  

Rescuers promised strawberry milk and a local pastry known as a poğaça to a young girl after she was pulled from the rubble during the 178th hour of rescue efforts in the Turkish city of Adiyaman.

In a video shared by Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Twitter on Monday, rescuers can be seen placing an oxygen mask on the young girl, named Hivay. 

Rescuers have worked tirelessly to pull children and adults from the rubble one week after the powerful earthquake struck southern Turkey and northwestern Syria. 

More than 36,000 people have died across both countries, according to authorities.

A child named Kaan is rescued by the personnel from under rubble of a collapsed building in Antakya district of Hatay, Turkey, on February 13.

Seven days after the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, teams are still finding victims that are alive. 

A man was rescued in Hatay on Monday in the 183rd hour of Turkey’s earthquake that struck 10 provinces on February 6.

State-run news agency Anadolu reported his name as Huseyin Berber.

The rescue operation took place at Mimar Sinan street of Antakya. Berber was immediately taken to a hospital, Anadolu reported.

Berber’s rescue followed the discovery of a 13-year-old boy in Hatay.

Turkish authorities arrested at least 97 people following theft and looting in the earthquake region, according to Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu. 

Following the earthquakes that affected 10 provinces, there have been 232 investigations related to theft, looting, and fraud in the region, Anadolu reported. 

Investigations regarding 232 incidents were initiated by Turkey’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office. 

United Nations(UN) Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths gestures as he stands near damaged buildings in Aleppo, Syria, on February 13.

The rescue phase of the earthquake response is “coming to a close,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said during a visit to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Monday.

“I’ve been hearing stories here in Aleppo this morning that chill you, with what happened on those early hours of that terrible day. What is the most striking here is even in Aleppo, which has suffered so much these many years, this moment, that moment a week or more ago was about the worst that these people have experienced,” Griffith told journalists. 

Griffiths, the current under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief at the UN said his office will launch appeals in “the next day or so” for both Turkey and Syria to cover roughly three months of humanitarian needs.

The aid chief said the UN had come to Syria to “raise money for the brave organizations which are helping these people of Aleppo, these people of Syria.” 

The UN will help to move aid from the government-held north to the rebel-held northwest, Griffiths added.

Six additional United Nations trucks carrying aid and relief from the World Food Programme crossed into northwestern Syria on Monday, according to a spokesperson from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The trucks carried food and non-food items (NFIs), Madevi Sun-Suon told CNN.

A total of 58 interagency UN trucks carrying aid have crossed into northwestern Syria through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing from Turkey since Thursday, according to information provided by Sun-Suon.

The head of Istanbul Social Services is pleading for more donations following the deadly earthquake that struck the region, saying the incoming aid in distribution centers is “not enough.”

Istanbul Social Services has more than 20,000 volunteers who work 24 hours a day, seven days a week across two main coordination centers, according to Enif Yavuz Dispar.

The city’s social services have been opening kindergartens, help centers for women and libraries for donations, and have sent more than 200 trucks, three planes and two ships of aid to the areas affected by the earthquake.

Turkish authorities have arrested a number of Turkish contractors and detained many after allegedly being connected to quake constructions in Turkey over the weekend and Monday, after two major earthquakes struck Turkey on February 6.

During his visit to Diyarbakir on Monday, Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in a presser that in “all earthquake-affected places, the public prosecutor’s office launched judicial investigation. In terms of law, all evidence is evaluated and we are identifying the names of the people responsible for these buildings.”

Bozdag pointed out that “some of the buildings are 30 years old, some are older, some are 20, and some were built in the near future, so our municipalities have this information,” and added that “audits are subject to the evaluation of this information, and our public prosecutors carry out investigations to determine who is involved in these constructions.”

Bozdag also mentioned that in Diyarbakir alone, “the judicial process against 32 people has been started.” 

According to Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu, Malatya prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 31 people on Monday over collapsed buildings in the city.

Anadolu also reported last Saturday that Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into the destroyed buildings, and as a result of that, 31 people were arrested on Monday. 

More on contractor arrests: Nazmi Tosun, the construction supervisor and technical representative of Emre Apartment, which was destroyed in Gaziantep province, was arrested in Istanbul on early Monday, Anadolu reported, citing the security forces. 

Another contractor was Mustafa Uncuoglu who was arrested in Istanbul on Saturday. Uncuoglu was the contractor for the Bahar apartment in Gaziantep province. At least nine people died who used to live in Bahar apartment, Anadolu reported.  

The Istanbul police force also arrested another contractor, Mehmet Ertan Akay, the contractor of a large residential building in the hard-hit Hatay province after his building collapsed during the quake in Gaziantep.

The Turkish security forces arrested Mehmet Yasar Coskun on Saturday at Istanbul Airport on his way to Montenegro while attempting to leave Turkey. Coskun was the contractor of a large residential building in Hatay province. He claimed that he did not know why his building collapsed and that his flight to Montenegro had nothing to do with his collapsed building, Anadolu reported. 

The Turkish Police also arrested Hasan Alpargun in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus after some buildings made by his construction company collapsed in the southern Adana province over the weekend, Anadolu reported, citing the security forces. 

Yavuz Karakus, the contractor of many destroyed buildings in Adıyaman, and his wife Sevilay Karakuş were taken into custody at Istanbul airport on Sunday, according to Anadolu. The Karakus couple were the contractors of many buildings destroyed in Adıyaman. They were later detained in Istanbul. Anadolu reported that they had $16,000 and an additional 20,000 Turkish liras ($1,061,30) with them in Istanbul airport.

Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, visits the affected neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria, on February 13.

The United Nations will help move aid from government-controlled regions in Syria to the rebel-held northwest of the country, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said during a visit to Aleppo in northern Syria Monday.

“We’ll have assistance moving from here to the northwest. But the northwest is only one part of Syria as you know,” Griffiths said.

Griffiths said on Sunday that the UN has “failed” the people in northwest Syria.

UN aid to Syria: A total of 52 UN trucks carrying aid have entered the northwest since Thursday, through the only authorized border crossing from Turkey, UN OCHA spokesperson Madevi Sun-Suon told CNN. Assad has received planeloads of aid from countries around the world.   

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 Assad, who is accused of killing his own people.

Syrian officials have repeatedly said the government is “ready” to send aid into the rebel-held territories, but no aid has reportedly entered from government-held territories since the February 6 earthquake. The Syrian government approved sending aid into rebel territory in the northwest on Friday, but no timeline was provided.

Quake aid held up by hardline group: Earthquake aid from government-held parts of Syria into rebel-held territory has been held up by “approval issues with Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),” a source familiar with the matter told CNN Sunday.

HTS, a reincarnation of the al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, is currently the dominant force in Idlib, Syria.

Both Turkey and Syria are grappling with the repercussions of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked the region last Monday, as hopes of finding further survivors dwindles amid freezing temperatures.

The United Nations has recognized failures to support quake victims in Syria, and Turkish police have made more than a dozen arrests in connection with online misinformation “spreading fear and panic amongst citizens.”

Here are the latest headlines:

The death toll from last Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria has now topped 36,000.

In Turkey alone, more than 31,000 have died, making the quake one of the deadliest in the country’s history.

Here’s the disaster in context:

Members of the Syrian civil defence, known as the White Helmets, transport a casualty from the rubble of buildings in the village of Azmarin in Syria's Idlib province on February 7.

Every time Abdulrahman Al-Dahhan closes his eyes at night, he hears the screams of friends and family in Syria pleading for help.

The voice messages he’s received chronicling their pain make it impossible to sleep, he says. Haunted by their cries, he lies awake tormented by guilt. He worries that each moment he rests, thousands back home in Syria are still buried alive under rubble.

More than 36,000 people have died across Turkey and Syria since a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region on February 6. Nearly a week later, a lucky few are still being pulled alive from the rubble but hopes of finding additional survivors dwindle amid freezing temperatures.

“It’s destroying me,” Al-Dahhan, 31, told CNN. “When it happened, I was receiving constant voice messages, jumping from number to number on WhatsApp, each one is someone crying, telling me they are seeing people dying around them. I can’t stop hearing them.”

Read the full story here.