Tragedy without end: The death toll has reached 33,000 and hopes are fading

The latest death toll from the deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria put the death toll at more than 33,000.

Almost seven days after the devastating strike of Enceladus, the two countries remain mired in grief. Hopes for survivors under the rubble are steadily «fading» and people's anger is sharpening.

The damage caused remains incalculable, at a time when millions of citizens, together with their grief, are now having to start from scratch. They are faced with the most basic issue, that of survival.

Yesterday, Saturday, rescuer Gizem from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa said she saw people engaged in looting in Adakia. «We cannot intervene as most of them are holding knives.».

Police and soldiers are trying to maintain order, control traffic and assist in rescue and food distribution operations.

According to the Turkish authorities, some 80,000 people are hospitalised, while the number of homeless people has exceeded one million.

With basic infrastructure destroyed, survivors are worried about disease.

«If people don't die here, under the rubble, they will die of their injuries. Otherwise from disease,» Gizem said. «There are no toilets here. It's a big problem.».

For his part, Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian operations officer, described the earthquake as the worst event to hit the region in a century and predicted that the death toll would «at least double».

«I think it's difficult to accurately estimate (the death toll),» but «I'm sure it will double, if not increase even more,» Griffiths told Sky News.

The earthquake is the seventh deadliest disaster on record this century, with the death toll approaching that of the 2003 earthquake in Iran, which killed 31,000 people.

So far, the official count is 24,617 dead in Turkey and more than 3,500 dead in Syria, where figures have not been updated since Friday.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adanom Gebrejus, visited Aleppo in Syria and described the devastation as «heartbreaking».

What I saw today in #Türkiye was devastating.

What were once homes, filled with families and memories, now lay contorted and tangled.

Our thoughts are with those affected and we will continue to support in any way we can. pic.twitter.com/bhMDR1oEGN

- Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) February 11, 2023

The investigation on contractors is expanding - 113 arrests have been made

The Turkish authorities have pledged to carry out a thorough investigation against any person believed to be responsible for the collapse of the buildings in Monday's devastating earthquake, while they have arrested 113 people.

Deputy Prime Minister Fuat Oktay said 131 suspects have so far been identified as responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of houses flattened by the earthquake in the 10 affected provinces. He added that detention warrants had been issued against 113 people.

«We will proceed thoroughly until the necessary legal process is completed, especially for buildings that have been severely damaged and buildings that have caused deaths and injuries,» he said.

According to him, the Ministry of Justice has set up offices to investigate earthquake-related offences in the earthquake-affected zones of the provinces to investigate the circumstances of deaths and injuries.

Environment Minister Murat Kurum said 24,921 buildings in the region collapsed or were severely damaged by the earthquake based on inspections of more than 170,000 buildings.

Prosecutors in Adana have ordered the arrest of 62 people as part of an investigation into the collapsed buildings, while prosecutors have called for the arrest of 33 people in Diyarbakir for the same reason, the official Anadolu news agency reported.

The agency reported that eight people were arrested in Sanliurfa and four in Osmaniyeh in connection with the damaged buildings that were believed to have had problems such as having their supports removed.

Police arrested at Istanbul airport the builder of a housing complex that collapsed in Antioch as he was preparing to board a flight to Montenegro. The arrest was made on Friday afternoon and he was officially detained on Saturday, the agency reported.

The luxury 12-storey residential complex was completed a decade ago and had 249 apartments. There is no information on the victims in this building. The arrested man told prosecutors that he did not know that the building collapsed and the trip he was going to Montenegro was for unrelated reasons, Anadolu reported.

«We did all the procedures required by law. We had issued all the necessary permits,» he said, according to Anadolu.

Nazmi Tosun, construction supervisor and technical representative of the Emre Apartment complex destroyed in Gaziantep province, was arrested this morning in Istanbul.

Prosecutors in Malatya today also issued arrest warrants against 31 persons in connection with collapsed buildings in the city.

Police in occupied northern Cyprus arrested Hassan Alpargun after some buildings built by his construction company collapsed over the weekend in the southern province of Adana, according to security forces.

Contractor Ibrahim Mustafa Uintsuoglu was arrested in Istanbul after negligence was found following a technical examination of the ruins of an apartment building in Gaziantep province.

Istanbul police arrested another contractor, Mehmet Ertan Akai, after a building he had built collapsed during the earthquake in Gaziantep.

Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Akai on charges of involuntary manslaughter and building code violations.

Mehmet Yasar Choskun, the contractor of a large residential building that collapsed in Hatay province, was also arrested on Saturday.

Earlier, security forces had detained Choskun at Istanbul airport as he was preparing to leave Turkey for Montenegro.

Choskun claimed that he did not know why the building was destroyed and that his trip to Montenegro had nothing to do with the collapse of the building.

Popular anger against Erdogan

As public outrage continues to grow in Turkey over the scale of the disaster and the pace of rescue efforts, the arrests are likely to be seen as an attempt by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to deflect responsibility ahead of Turkish elections.

Opposition leaders have long accused the Erdogan government of failing to enforce building regulations and of not accounting for the proceeds of a special levy imposed after the 1999 Izmit earthquake to ensure that apartment buildings and offices are more earthquake-resistant.

The president has accused his critics of lying and in his statements so far has appeared to blame fate for the disaster, saying that such disasters «have always happened» and are «fate's plan». He pledged to start rebuilding within weeks.

Hopes from the ruins

Early this morning, Anadolu Agency reported that a 7-year-old boy, Mustafa, was rescued in Hatay province, while 62-year-old Nafizeh Yilmaz was pulled alive from the rubble in the town of Nurdagi in the same province. Both had been trapped for 163 hours before being rescued yesterday, Sunday.

Simbel Kayah, 40, was pulled from the ruins of a five-storey building in Gaziantep province 170 hours after the earthquake.

Erengul Oder, 60, remained under the rubble for 166 hours in Adiyaman province, while 45-year-old Chengiz Polat was pulled out of the rubble after 162 hours. Polat told rescuers he was not hitting a stove next to him to make noise so they could hear him.

In the same province, rescue teams managed to extricate after 158 hours 10-year-old Asima Baltachi, who asked the rescuers for fruit-flavoured jelly beans as soon as he came out.

In addition, rescue crews in Kachramanmaras are in contact with three survivors, believed to be a mother, her daughter and a baby.

According to the most recent estimates, at least 33,186 people have lost their lives since the 6 February earthquake: 29,605 in Turkey and 3,581 in Syria.

Soldier helped 75-year-old woman locate her son

A Turkish soldier went into an excavator's bucket yesterday to climb up and search inside an earthquake-damaged house in Antioch for a mobile phone belonging to a 75-year-old woman who feared her son was dead after five days without contact.

The woman, who said her name was Mama Busra, had asked rescuers to find her phone and was waiting to call her son in a nearby park where tents have been set up for earthquake victims.

Responding to her call, Muratan Adil, a special operations soldier who travelled to this earthquake-stricken southern Turkish city from Ankara to assist in the rescue operations, climbed with the help of an excavator onto the second-floor balcony of the rubble of her house.

When Adil arrived on the balcony another rescuer who was inside the woman's destroyed house gave him a red bag with her belongings and inside it was her mobile phone.

The excavator lowered Adil, who headed for the park where the woman was waiting for him in agony.

The cell phone battery was dead so she couldn't call her son, but someone else heard her son's name and said she knew him and he was fine.

He called him from his own phone and her son answered. This was the first time Mama Busra heard her child's voice after the earthquake.

“It's like you gave me the whole world,” the woman said, bursting into tears.

Unsuccessful searches in Antioch

No missing persons were found during the joint operation of the Greek rescue mission and other international missions to locate missing persons in the ruins of a high-rise building in Antioch.

Shortly before 7 in the morning, the rescuers of EMAK completed the search and left the site for the Turkish crews to continue. The mission stayed for more than 14 hours at the place where they had received them after a request from relatives of the missing persons.

From noon on Saturday and throughout the evening the mission using geophones, rescue dogs and thermal cameras tried unsuccessfully to finally find a 24-year-old female athlete who allegedly sent a message through the rubble.

The reception of the Greek delegation at Eleftherios Venizelos was very emotional

The Greek rescue mission was greeted with applause and in an atmosphere of great emotion by those who attended the arrival from Turkey at Eleftherios Venizelos Airport. The Greek rescue mission, which had been in Turkey for almost a week, returned to Greece shortly before 23:00. The mission was welcomed at the airport by the political leadership of the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, the Minister of Health, Thanos Plevris, the Chief of the Fire Brigade and members of the Greek Emergency Medical Services (EKAB).

«When a person feels pain it means that he is alive. When he feels the pain of another, it means he is human.» With this quote by Nikos Kazantzakis, the Chief of the Fire Brigade, Lieutenant General George Pournaras, wanted to summarize the philosophy of his colleagues, expressing at the same time his thanks and his deep gratitude for the work done in Turkey by the Greek rescue mission. As Mr. Pournaras said, the members of the PA who operated in Turkey proved above all «first of all that they are human beings and then genuine and proper professionals». «As the Chief of the Fire Corps, representing all the personnel, we address a big thank you to them and I feel deep gratitude for the work they did in the country of Turkey. And I am given the opportunity to say that not only the officers who went down but every day all the personnel of the Fire Brigade are giving a huge fight for the protection and life of our fellow citizens and their property, and for this I am grateful to them. The Greek people should feel that we are always by their side in whatever they need,» he said.

«We did what we would have done at home. We did nothing more, nothing less than what we would have done at home’, stressed the head of the 1st EMAK, Chief of Staff, Dimitris Roupas, upon his arrival at Eleftherios Venizelos Airport. As he stressed, the most important thing is that the Greek delegation has returned and all of them are healthy. »This is a very big disaster, we all wanted to help them. We managed it, we did not stop, we were on the field 24 hours a day. There were too many people trapped. When you arrive from the first groups the problems are too many and too big. As the days go by the problems get smaller. We had a lot to manage, our transport, the closed roads, communications. Nevertheless, we managed, the locals helped us a lot and everything went well,« he noted. He pointed out that the most moving moment they experienced was their agonizing and painstaking efforts to extricate little Fatma, who eventually lost her life, but they succeeded and saved her little sister.

«We did nothing less than what the ambulance does every day. The only thing that changed was the degree of difficulty, which was definitely different. I believe that many things will be said in the coming days, situations will be clarified, we are all present», said the head of the KEPY-EKAB in the mission to Turkey, Socrates Doukas.