The death toll from a huge earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria climbed to more than 16,000, as rescuers raced to reach survivors stuck under rubble in freezing weather. | AFP
“My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister are in the ruins. They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life,” said Semire Coban, a kindergarten teacher, in Turkey’s Hatay province.
Turkish officials had held talks with Twitter leaders after which deputy infrastructure minister Omer Fatih Sayan tweeted Thursday that Turkey expected the social network to cooperate more in the “fight against disinformation”.Temperatures plunged to minus-five degrees Celsius in Gaziantep early Thursday, but the cold did not stop thousands of families from spending the night in cars and makeshift tents, too scared to stay in their homes or prohibited from returning to them.
Officials and medics said 12,873 people had died in Turkey and at least 3,162 in neighboring Syria from Monday’s quake, bringing the total to 16,035. Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply. “Even the buildings that haven’t collapsed were severely damaged. There are now more people under the rubble than those above it,” Hassan, who did not provide his full name, said in his rebel-held Syrian town of Jindayris.
They have been toiling since the quake to pull survivors out from under the debris of dozens of flattened buildings in northwestern areas of war-torn Syria that remain outside the government’s control.
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