Turkey-Syria earthquake latest: death toll passes 24,000 as calls for aid intensify | Turkey-Syria earthquake 2023

Turkey’s death toll from this week’s devastating earthquakes has risen to 20,665, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said on Saturday.

It said nearly 93,000 victims were evacuated from the earthquake zone in southern Turkey and that more than 166,000 workers were involved in the rescue and relief efforts.

There have been 1,891 aftershocks since the first tremor early Monday, he added.

Good morning and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the aftermath of the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday.

The confirmed death toll now stands at 24,208. Officials and medics said 20,665 people died in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria.

Rescue efforts continue in frigid conditions as hope of finding more survivors dwindles.

Here are the other latest developments:

• Even 100 hours after an earthquake, rescuers pulled survivors – including a newborn baby – from the rubble. In Samandağ, in southern Turkey’s Hatay province, a 10-day-old boy named Yagiz was rescued from a destroyed building overnight, while in Kırıkhan, German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman alive from the rubble more than 104 hours after she was buried and taken to a carried to the waiting ambulance.

• At least 870,000 people in both countries urgently needed food after the earthquakeThe UN warned that up to 5.3 million people were made homeless in Syria alone.

• The UN chief of justice called for an immediate ceasefire in Syria so that aid could reach all victims of the earthquake. Four million people in the rebel-held Northwest are in need of humanitarian aid, but aid has not been shipped from government-controlled areas for three weeks.

• The Syrian government said it has authorized the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside of its control. A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian airstrikes had already destroyed hospitals and led to power and water shortages.

• The International Organization for Migration said on Friday that the 14 relief trucks were heading north-west Syria to transport much-needed heaters, tents, blankets and other relief supplies. This is an area where 90% of the population – around 4 million people – were already in need of help due to the civil war before the earthquakes.

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted on Friday for the first time that his government “was not able to reach and help the victims as quickly as we would have liked”.

  Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report