A teenage girl was pulled alive from the rubble in Turkey on Thursday more than 10 days after a devastating earthquake hit the region, but such rescues have become increasingly rare, leaving sorrow and anger to mount as hope dies.
Death toll in Turkey and Syria surpasses 42,000
Authorities have yet to announce numbers still missing
Concerns for rebel-held northwest Syria
Charity warns impact will be felt for many months
The 17-year-old was extracted from the ruins of a collapsed apartment bloc in Turkey’s southeastern Kahramanmaras province, broadcaster TRT Haber reported, 248 hours since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the dead of night on Feb 6.
Footage showed her being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance covered with a gold-coloured thermal blanket.
The quake killed at least 36,187 in southern Turkey, while authorities in neighbouring Syria have reported 5,800 deaths – a figure that has changed little in days.
While several people were found alive in Turkey on Wednesday, the number of rescues has dwindled significantly. Neither Turkey nor Syria have said how many people are still missing.
For families still waiting to retrieve their lost relatives, there is growing anger over what they see as corrupt building practices and deeply flawed urban development that resulted in thousands of homes and businesses disintegrating.
“I have two children. No others. They are both under this rubble,” said Sevil Karaabdüloğlu, as excavators tore down what remained of a high-end block of flats in the southern city of Antakya, where her two daughters had lived.
Around 650 people are believed to have died when the Renaissance Residence building collapsed in the quake.
“We rented this place as an elite place, a safe place. How do I know that the contractor built it this way? … Everyone is looking to make a profit. They’re all guilty,” she said.
Some 200 km (125 miles) away, around 100 people gathered at a small cemetery in the town of Pazarcik, to bury a family of four — Ismail and Selin Yavuzatmaca and their two young daughters — who had died in the doomed Renaissance building.
“This should have been the fate of the Renaissance constructor, not of Ismail!” his sister-in-law yelled.
Turkey has promised to investigate anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings and has ordered the detention of more than 100 suspects, including developers.
AID CONVOYS
Across the border in Syria, the earthquake slammed a region divided and devastated by 12 years of civil war.
The Syrian government says the death toll in the territory it controls is 1,414. More than 4,000 fatalities have been reported in the rebel-held northwest, but rescuers say nobody has been found alive there since Feb 9.
The aid effort has been hampered by the conflict and many people in the northwest feel abandoned as supplies almost invariably head to other parts of the sprawling disaster zone.
Deliveries from Turkey were severed completely in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, when a route used by the United Nations was temporarily blocked. Earlier this week, days after the disaster, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad granted approval for two additional crossings to be opened.
As of Thursday, 119 UN trucks had gone through the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam crossings since the earthquake, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters.
Meanwhile, a convoy of 15 aid trucks from Qatar reached the rebel-held town of Afrin, bringing desperately needed food, essential medicines and tents.
A view shows trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Qatar to quake-hit northwest Syria at the border crossing of Bab al-Hamam in rebel-held town of Afrin, Syria Feb 16, 202
