Newsman: The combined death toll from Monday’s earthquakes in Turkey-Syria has surpassed 21,500. Thousands of people became homeless and in need of urgent shelter and aid .Rescue workers in Turkey and Syria are battling inclement weather and logistical hurdles in a race to find survivors buried under the rubble. They continue to dig into the rubble for a fifth consecutive day to find more survivor as operations continued on Friday, but hopes of finding people alive are fading away.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described the quakes as the “disaster of the century.” In Turkey, more than 100,000 people — including soldiers, police officers, firefighters and NGO workers — have been called into action.
The death toll in In Turkey, there were at least 18,342 dead and more than 74,242 injured, the country’s disaster management authority said Friday. In government-controlled Syria, state media reported 1,347 deaths and 2,295 injured. In rebel-held northwest Syria, rescue workers said more than 2,037 people had been killed and 2,950 were injured. The toll is still expected to rise.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited Aleppo in his first public visit to the disaster zone since the quakes, according to his office.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said damaged roads were complicating relief distribution there. Aid efforts in the region have been hampered by the effects of the war that divided the country into government and opposition control.
Countries from around the world are ramping up efforts to deliver aid to Syria, where the government is under Western sanctions and access to the rebel-held region is restricted.
The U.S. Treasury granted a license to all transactions related to earthquake relief in Syria, which would otherwise have run afoul of existing sanctions against the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, it said Thursday.
The United States has also announced $85 million in urgent humanitarian assistance for the two countries.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that teams from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were working on the ground in Turkey.
France on Thursday announced more than $12.9 million in emergency aid to Syria, which will be distributed to NGOs working with the United Nations.
Britain is supporting Syrian civil defense workers known as the White Helmets, which operate outside government control in northwest Syria announced an additional $3.6 million in aid to the group Friday. Germany said it would provide some $26.9 million in funding to the U.N.
Running out of food stocks, need more crossings into NW Syria: WFP
The World Food Program says it is running out of stock in opposition-held northwest Syria and has appealed for more corridors between Syria and Turkey to be opened.
“We have reached the people there, but we need to replenish our stocks,” Corinne Fleischer, WFP regional director in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe, told reporters. “We are running out of stocks and we need access to bring new stocks in. The border crossing is open now, but we need to get new border crossings open.”
Currently, the United Nations only has one approved crossing between the two countries – Bab al-Hawa.
The UN said its first convoy crossed into Syria on Thursday, after being delayed by damage to the road leading up to the crossing.
The Turkish government says it has authorized aid to go through two additional crossings.
