“We experienced the biggest disaster of our history,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference Saturday, speaking through an interpreter. “If you go on site, you will understand how grave the situation is compared to what you see on your TV screens.”
Hope for recovering more survivors is dwindling by the hour, as those still trapped approach 13 days without food or water. AFAD expects to end most of its rescue efforts Sunday night, according to VOA News.
In Turkey, rescuers managed to pull a couple and their 12-year-old child alive from underneath a collapsed apartment building in Hatay province about 12 days after the earthquakes, but the child later died, Turkish broadcaster TRT World reported.
Christian Atsu, a Ghanaian soccer player who spent several years in the English Premier League, was among the victims. His agents announced that his body was recovered from under the rubble on Saturday.
The majority of foreign search and rescue teams that helped in Turkey departed the country by late Saturday, according to Cavusoglu. Schooling in Turkey’s affected provinces is expected to resume early this week, Minister of National Education Mahmut Ozer said.
The earthquakes have wrought destruction across parts of southern Turkey and northwestern Syria, displacing thousands and pushing them into makeshift cities filled with shipping container homes or rows of tents. About 84,700 buildings collapsed, are damaged or are in need of immediate demolition, Murat Kurum, head of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, said Friday.
The Turkish government says it aims to rebuild about 30,000 buildings within a year. In northwest Syria, at least 9,000 buildings have been completely or partially destroyed, the UNOCHA said.
Emergency aid from the United Nations has continued to enter Syria through border openings in places such as Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam over the weekend. On Saturday, World Food Program director David Beasley told Reuters that authorities in northwest Syria were hindering access to the country and “bottlenecking” operations.
“That has to get fixed straight away,” he said.
At least 70 aid workers have died in the earthquakes, according to the UNOCHA, including individuals who took part in implementing U.N. cross-border aid.
Semanur Karayaka contributed to this report.
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
