Key Points
- Rescuers have pulled survivors out of the rubble six days after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck.
- Hopes of finding more people alive are fading.
- Several residents and rescue workers in one Turkish city hit hard by the quake say they have seen people looting.
Rescuers have pulled survivors from earthquake rubble, six days after one of the worst natural disasters to hit parts of Syria and Türkiye, as the death toll exceeded 28,000 and looked set to rise further.
But hopes were fading that many more survivors would be found. In Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre in southern Türkiye, there were fewer visible rescue operations amid the smashed concrete mounds of fallen houses and apartment blocks, while ever more trucks rumbled through the streets shipping out debris.
Facing questions over his handling of Türkiye's most devastating earthquake since 1939, President Tayyip Erdogan promised to start rebuilding within weeks, saying hundreds of thousands of buildings were wrecked.
In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving many homeless for a second time after they were displaced by a decade-old civil war, though the region has received little aid compared to government-held areas.
The European Union's envoy to Syria urged Damascus not to politicise issues of humanitarian aid, rejecting accusations that the bloc had failed to provide sufficient help to Syrians after Monday's 7.8-magnitude quake and major aftershocks.
"It is absolutely unfair to be accused of not providing aid, when actually we have constantly been doing exactly that for over a decade and we are doing so much more even during the earthquake crisis," Dan Stoenescu told Reuters.
In Türkiye's southeastern province of Hatay, a Romanian rescue team carried a 35-year-old man named Mustafa down a pile of debris from a building, broadcaster CNN Turk said, about 149 hours after the quake.
"His health is good, he was talking," said one of the rescuers. "He was saying, 'Get me out of here quickly, I've got claustrophobia'."
The team placed the man, lying on a stretcher and wrapped in a gold foil blanket, in a waiting ambulance, before hugging each other.
Meanwhile Getty showed images of a 12-year-old Syrian girl, Cudi, who was evacuated on Sunday by rescuers from the rubble of a destroyed building in Hatay.
In Hatay's capital Antakya, body bags lay on city streets and residents were wearing masks to try to cover the smell of death. Ordinary people had joined the rescue effort, working without official coordination, said one who declined to give his name.
"There is chaos, rubble, and bodies everywhere," he said. His group had worked overnight trying to reach a university teacher calling to them from the rubble. But by morning she had stopped responding to them, he said.
"There are still collapsed buildings untouched in the side streets," he added.
The southern Turkish city of Antakya was one of the hardest hit by Monday's earthquake. Source: Getty / DPA
'Looters carry knives'
On Saturday, Gizem, a rescue worker from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, said she had seen looters in the city of Antakya. "We cannot intervene much, as most of the looters carry knives."
Police and soldiers fanned out to keep order and help with traffic, rescues and food handouts.
Türkiye said about 80,000 people were in hospital, with more than one million in temporary shelters.
With basic infrastructure in ruins, survivors feared disease.
"If people don't die here under the rubble, they'll die from injuries. If not, they will die from infection," said Gizem.
"There is no toilet here. It is a big problem."
Search and rescue crews have worked round the clock to dig out earthquake survivors in Antakya in Türkiye's Hatay province. Source: Getty / NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
He praised Türkiye's response, saying his experience was that disaster victims were always disappointed by early relief efforts.
The earthquake hit as Mr Erdogan faces a national election scheduled for June. Even before the disaster, his popularity was falling due to soaring inflation and a slumping Turkish currency.
The vote was already being seen as Mr Erdogan's toughest challenge in two decades in power. He has called for solidarity and condemned "negative" politicking.
Some people affected by the quake and opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on, and critics have questioned why the army, which played a key role after a 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner.
Mr Erdogan has acknowledged problems, such as the challenge of delivering aid despite damaged transport links, but said the situation had been brought under control.
Prosecutors investigating the soundness of buildings that collapsed have ordered the detention or arrest of as many as 95 people, the state-owned Anadolu news agency said.
The quake ranks as the world's seventh-deadliest natural disaster this century, its toll approaching the 31,000 from a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.
It has killed 24,617 inside Türkiye, and more than 3,500 in Syria, where tolls have not been updated since Friday.
In Syria's government-controlled city of Aleppo, World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the disaster as heartbreaking as he supervised some relief distribution and promised more.
Western nations have largely shunned President Bashar al-Assad during the war that began in 2011.
