Turkey, Syria quake toll rises to more than 22,000 as search continues

In opposition-held Syria, the Syrian Civil Defense Forces, also known as the White Helmets, reported recovering the dead as recently as Friday, including a whole family in the city of Salqin and a child in the city of Jinderes. The group — operating with far fewer resources than rescue workers in Turkey — continued digging nonetheless, sometimes with their bare hands, as the death toll between the two countries topped 23,000.

Fourteen relief trucks arrived in northwestern Syria from Turkey on Friday, the largest such shipment to reach the enclave since Monday’s tremors leveled entire neighborhoods on either side of the border. A first UN aid convoy drove into the area on Thursday. UN officials blame damaged roads, fuel shortages and safety issues for the delayed response.

In a press conference on Friday, Raed al Saleh, director of the White Helmets, criticized the international community for not doing more to help north-west Syria.

The United Nations “didn’t have it [been] provide everything” to support the group’s rescue efforts, he said, calling for a UN investigation into why international aid had arrived in government-held regions but not in rebel-held areas. Something new The aid that arrives will have no impact on the rescue operations that are unfolding, he said. Instead, the aid is to be used to clear up debris and rickety buildings.

However, in some villages the search continued.

“The search continues and hope for life begins to dwindle,” the group said tweeted on Friday.

Rescue efforts were slowed in some areas by winter weather, heavy rains and one Syrian village, a dam failure causing widespread flooding.

Planes carrying aid from Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Libya landed at government-controlled airports in Syria on Friday in support of the Syrian government’s relief effort, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited government-held Aleppo with his wife Asma on his first public visit to the disaster zone since the quakes. Pictures shared by the government showed them meeting with patients at a hospital in the war-ravaged city, where rescue operations are underway.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited devastated regions in the south of his country, where he described the earthquake as the “disaster of the century”. More than 100,000 people – including soldiers, police officers, firefighters and aid workers – have been called to action in Turkey, and nearly 100 countries have offered to help.

More than 250 rescued children in Turkey are still separated from their families, Turkish officials said on Friday.

Turkish authorities on Friday arrested Mehmet Yasar Coskun, the developer of a luxury apartment complex in the southern city of Antakya, who collapsed during the earthquakes, state-run Anadolu News Agency reported. The 12-storey apartment complex, named Renaissance Residence, contained 250 condominiums, according to local media reports.

Aerial images circulating on social media showed a catastrophic collapse that ripped large parts of the complex flat to the ground, although other adjacent apartment blocks remained standing. Hundreds of people were feared trapped in the rubble. Coskun attempted to travel from Istanbul to Montenegro on Friday night and was arrested by an Istanbul prosecutor, Anadolu said.

The US military began deploying forces in support of earthquake relief efforts in Turkey, US officials said Friday, with a Navy headquarters overseeing the mission and a Marine Corps general arriving on the scene to assess the scope of what might be needed assess support.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the US military could also help in Syria, where the United States maintains a limited counterterrorism mission in the northeast corner of the country.

Two US urban search and rescue teams have been working “day and night” for the past 48 hours to help recover victims in the devastated Turkish city of Adiyaman, said Jeffry L. Flake, the US ambassador to Turkey. in a brief interview on Friday, detailing the Biden administration’s efforts to help the Turkish government deal with the country’s worst disaster in decades.

The US teams, based in Fairfax, VA and Los Angeles, are joining a host of other foreign rescue teams, including a large contingent from Algeria, who have deployed to sites of devastation in southern and southeastern Turkey.

The American rescue teams, which include 160 personnel, a dozen dogs and 170,000 pounds of equipment, are “making good progress,” the ambassador said.

US military helicopters, including heavy-lift rotorcraft and Blackhawks, had flown aid from Incirlik Air Base to the affected provinces; More helicopters should arrive at the base “in the coming days,” Flake said.

A US field hospital was also set up in Hatay, another hard-hit province, in coordination with Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian disaster relief organization.

US financial assistance has also been provided for relief efforts in Syria, in both government-held and rebel-held parts of the country, through “partner agencies,” Flake said. It was unclear exactly how much of the $85 million aid package would be allocated to Syria, which is isolated due to its civil war and Western sanctions. The Treasury Department on Thursday issued a general license approving transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Syria for six months.

At least eight US citizens were killed in the quake, John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, said at a briefing on Friday.

Sivanka Dhanapala, the representative of the UN refugee agency in Syria, said on Friday that access to north-west Syria has been hampered by damage from the quake. More than 5.3 million affected people in Syria will need shelter and the agency is currently focusing on life-saving efforts, including distributing tents for the displaced.

O’Grady reported from Dahab, Egypt. Fahim reported from Istanbul. Parker reported from Washington. Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul, Dan Lamothe in Washington, Ellen Francis in London and Niha Masih in Seoul contributed to this report.