•  Up to 23 million people could be affected – WHO

Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan has declared seven days of national mourning following devastating earthquakes that killed more than 5,000 people and toppled buildings across southeast Turkey and northern Syria, Aljazeera reported on Tuesday morning.

The media house noted that authorities fear the death toll from Monday’s predawn magnitude 7.8 temblor, followed by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake and several aftershocks will continue to climb as rescuers looked for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across a region already suffering under Syria’s 12-year civil war and a refugee crisis.

Rescuers searched through the frigid night into Tuesday morning, hoping to dig more survivors out of the rubble as those trapped cried out for help from beneath mountains of debris.

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Tuesday that the death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey had risen to 3,419.

Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said earlier on Tuesday that 20,426 others were injured. Tatar said more than 5,700 buildings had also been destroyed.

In Syria, at least 1,602 people were killed and about 3,500 others were injured, according to the Ministry of Health and the White Helmets rescue organization.

The PUNCH reports that The US Geological Survey measured the initial earthquake at 7.8, with a depth of 18km (11 miles). Hours later, a 7.6 magnitude temblor also struck. The second jolt caused a multi-storey apartment building in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa to topple onto the street in a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, according to video of the scene.

More than 7,800 people have been rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority. Strained medical facilities have quickly filled with injured people, rescue workers said.

Up to 23 million people could be affected – WHO

Up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquake that has killed thousands in Turkey and Syria, the WHO warned on Tuesday, promising long-term assistance.

“Event overview maps show that potentially 23 million people are exposed, including around five million vulnerable populations,” the World Health Organization’s senior emergencies officer Adelheid Marschang said.

“Civilian infrastructure and potentially health infrastructure have been damaged across the affected region, mainly in Turkey and northwest Syria,” she said.

The WHO “considers that the main unmet needs may be in Syria in the immediate and mid-term,” Marschang told the WHO’s executive committee in Geneva.

She spoke as rescuers in Turkey and Syria braved freezing cold, aftershocks and collapsing buildings, as they dug for survivors buried by a string of earthquakes that killed more than 5,000 people.

“It is now a race against time,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, explaining that the UN health agency was urgently sending aid to the area.

“We’re mobilising emergency supplies and we have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable.”

Disaster agencies said several thousand buildings were flattened in cities across a vast Turkey-Syria border region — pouring misery on an area already plagued by war, insurgency, refugee crises and a recent cholera outbreak.

Through the night, survivors used their bare hands to pick over the twisted ruins of multi-storey apartment blocks — trying to save family, friends and anyone else sleeping inside when the first massive 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday.

The situation is particularly dire in northern Syria, which has already been decimated by years of war.

“The movement of aid through the border into northwest Syria is likely to be or is already disrupted due to the damage caused by the earthquake,” Marschang said.

“This in itself would be a huge crisis already.”

She addressed a special meeting on the tragedy, which held a minute’s silence for the victims.

The WHO chief vowed that the agency would “work closely with all partners to support authorities in both countries in the critical hours and days ahead, and in the months and years to come as both countries recover and rebuild.”

Credit: Punch, AFP