ANTAKYA, Turkey, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Six people have been killed in an earthquake along the border between Turkey and Syria, CNN Turk reported on Tuesday. Thousands of houses.
Monday’s earthquake, this time measuring 6.4, was centered near the southern Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon. It struck at a depth of 10 km (6.2 mi), the European Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) said.
CNN Turk showed a rescue team climbing a ladder to enter a building where some people were trapped after the recent earthquake. The earthquake was said to have occurred when people were trying to retrieve belongings from the already damaged building.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 294 people were injured in Monday evening’s earthquake, with 18 seriously injured and taken to hospitals in Adana and Tardiol.
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Patients were evacuated from some health facilities in operation after the massive tremor two weeks ago, as cracks appeared in the buildings, Coca said on Twitter.
In Samanthak, where the country’s disaster and emergency management agency AFAD reported one death on Monday, residents braced for more collapsed buildings, but much of the town had already been evacuated after the initial tremors. Mounds of garbage and discarded furniture line the dark, abandoned streets.
Muna Al Omar said he was in a tent in a park in central Antakya when the ground started to warm up again.
“I thought the earth was going to split under my feet,” she cried Monday, cradling her 7-year-old son in her arms.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on a visit to Turkey on Monday that Washington would “take a long time” for recovery efforts in the wake of the February 6 earthquake and aftershocks, and attention turned to that. Shelter and reconstruction work.
The death toll in Turkey from the earthquakes two weeks ago rose to 41,156, AFAD said on Monday, and was expected to rise further, with 385,000 apartments known to have been destroyed or badly damaged and many more still missing.
Construction of nearly 200,000 apartments in Turkey’s 11 earthquake-hit provinces will begin next month, President Tayyip Erdogan said.
The U.S. State Department has announced that total U.S. humanitarian assistance for earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria has reached $185 million.
[1/17] People react after an earthquake in Antakya, Hatay Province, Turkey on February 20, 2023. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
About 356,000 pregnant women who survived the earthquakes needed urgent access to health services, according to the UN agency for sexual and reproductive health.
They include 226,000 women in Turkey and 130,000 women in Syria, some 38,800 of whom will give birth in the next month. Many of them were housed in camps or exposed to freezing temperatures and struggled to get food or clean water.
Syria aid
In Syria, already torn by more than a decade of civil war, most of the deaths occurred in the northwest, where the United Nations said 4,525 people were killed. The region is controlled by rebels at war with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, complicating aid efforts.
Syrian officials say 1,414 people have been killed in areas controlled by the Assad regime.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said its convoy of 14 trucks had left Turkey on Sunday to help with rescue operations in northwestern Syria.
The World Food Program is also pressing authorities in the region to stop blocking aid access from Syrian government-controlled areas.
As of Monday morning, 197 trucks carrying United Nations humanitarian aid had entered northwest Syria through two border crossings, a spokesman for the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs said.
Thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey have returned to their homes in northwestern Syria and contacted relatives affected by the disaster.
At the Turkish-Silvegozu border crossing, hundreds of Syrians lined up early Monday morning to cross.
Mustafa Hannan, who said he saw about 350 people waiting, dropped off his pregnant wife and 3-year-old son.
The 27-year-old car electrician said his family was leaving for several months after their home in Antakya collapsed, and he took the authorities’ promise to allow him to spend up to six months in Syria without losing the chance to return to Turkey.
“I’m worried they won’t be allowed back,” he said. “We are already separated from our nation. Are we going to be separated from our families now? If I rebuild here they will not be able to return and my life will be gone.”
Report by Ali Kukukogmen and Henrid Sacker; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Huseyin Hayatsever, Ezgi Erkoyun in Turkey and Akriti Sharma in Bangalore; By Parisa Hafezi and Stephen Coates; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Lincoln Feist.
Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
