International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday as rescuers worked tirelessly to pull children from the rubble of a massive earthquake that has killed more than 24,000 people. A winter freeze in the affected areas has hampered rescue efforts and deepened the suffering of millions, many of whom are in desperate need of assistance. The UN warned that at least 870,000 people urgently need food in the two countries, and the quake has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone. Aftershocks following Monday’s 7.8‑magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended survivors’ lives.
“When I see the destroyed buildings, the bodies, it’s not that I can’t see where I will be in two or three years—I can’t imagine where I’ll be tomorrow,” said Fidan Turan, a pensioner in Turkey’s southern city of Antakya, her eyes filling with tears. “We’ve lost 60 of our extended family members. Sixty! What can I say? It’s God’s will.” The United Nations World Food Programme appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590 000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284 000 in Syria. Of those, 545 000 are internally displaced and 45 000 are refugees.
Humanitarian access remains a critical issue. The UN rights office urged all actors in the affected area—where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate—to allow aid deliveries. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, deemed a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work. In rebel‑held northwestern Syria, about four million people depend on humanitarian relief, yet no aid has arrived from government‑controlled areas for three weeks. The Syrian government said it had approved assistance to quake‑hit zones outside its control, but only two aid convoys have crossed the border from Turkey this week, where authorities are also managing a larger domestic relief effort. A decade of civil war and Syrian‑Russian aerial bombardment had already devastated hospitals and created shortages of electricity and water. UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to authorize new cross‑border humanitarian points between Turkey and Syria; the council is expected to discuss the matter early next week. Turkey announced plans to open two new routes into rebel‑held parts of Syria. Meanwhile, the winter freeze has forced thousands to spend nights in cars or huddle around makeshift fires that now dot the quake‑hit region.
Five days of grief have begun to turn into anger over the poor quality of construction and the Turkish government’s response to the nation’s most dire disaster in nearly a century. Officials report that 12 141 buildings were either destroyed or seriously damaged. “The floors are piling on top of each other,” said Mustafa Erdik, a professor at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, noting that the chances of finding survivors are slim. Police detained a contractor trying to flee the country after his building collapsed in the quake. The tremor was the deadliest since the 1939 7.8‑magnitude quake that killed 33 000 people. Officials and medics now confirm 20 665 deaths in Turkey and 3 553 in Syria, bringing the total to 24 218. Public frustration with the government’s handling of the disaster is reshaping the tone of the presidential election campaign ahead of June polls. “People who didn’t die from the earthquake were left to die in the cold,” said Hakan Tanriverdi to AFP in Adıyaman province. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan conceded for the first time on Friday that his administration had not been able to reach and help victims “as quickly as we had desired”.
One of the most heartbreaking stories involves 24 Cypriot children, aged 11 to 14, who were in Turkey for a volleyball tournament when the quake collapsed their hotel. Ten of the children’s bodies have been repatriated to northern Cyprus. Turkish media reported that at least 19 members of the group—including 15 accompanying adults—have now been confirmed dead.
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