International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday where rescuers toiled to pull children from rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.
A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid. At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.
Aftershocks following Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors.
“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.
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“We’ve lost 60 of our extended family members,” she said. “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 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees, it said.
The UN rights office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area — where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate — to allow humanitarian access.
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The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is considered 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 rely on humanitarian relief but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks.
Source: eNCA
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In other news – Death Toll in Turkey and Syria From Earthquake Passes 20,000
The United Nations on Thursday sent its first aid convoy into opposition-controlled Syria since a powerful earthquake hit the region three days ago, a natural disaster that has killed more than 20,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless across Syria and neighboring Turkey. Learn more
