Enlarge image
This woman was also rescued after 90 hours
Photo: UMIT BEKTAS / REUTERS
This article will be continuously updated.
Faeser and Pistorius praise the rapid earthquake aid provided by THW and the Bundeswehr
9.10 a.m .:
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser and Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius have recognized the relief efforts of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) and the Bundeswehr in the earthquake disaster in Turkey.
Faeser said during a visit to Wunstorf Air Base in Lower Saxony that she was impressed "how smoothly and how great" the cooperation between the two organizations was.
A “very fast and really uncomplicated cooperation” succeeds here.
According to Faeser, on Thursday three Bundeswehr machines had brought about 50 tons of relief supplies that had been put together by the THW to Turkey.
According to Pistorius, three more flights from Wunstorf with more than 40 tons of material on board are planned for Friday.
In the next few days it would "continue like this," he said.
Pistorius was also "happy" that help could be provided so quickly from Germany.
He described the Bundeswehr's contribution as "reliable and fast".
10-month-old baby and mother rescued from rubble in Turkey
8.40 a.m .:
Helpers rescued a ten-month-old baby with his mother in southeast Turkey – the two endured 90 hours under the rubble.
The helpers wrapped the baby in a thermal blanket, as shown in the pictures.
According to the Istanbul Fire Department involved in the rescue, the two were found alive on Friday night in the Samandag district of Hatay province.
In Hatay, helpers also rescued a man after 101 hours under rubble.
The rescue workers needed ten hours to free him from under a concrete block, as reported by broadcaster CNN Türk.
In Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, a woman and her son were rescued alive on Friday morning, the broadcaster reported.
They were buried under the rubble of a ten-story building.
Meanwhile, the number of bodies recovered in Turkey continues to rise.
The civil protection agency Afad reported 18,342 dead on Friday morning.
The death toll thus exceeded that of the devastating earthquake in 1999. At that time, an earthquake in the province of Izmit near Istanbul killed more than 17,000 people.
According to the state agency Sana and the rescue organization White Helmets, more than 3,377 dead have been found in Syria so far.
Afad put the number of injured in Turkey at 74,242.
The death toll is expected to increase dramatically.
Researcher: Istanbul is threatened with a major earthquake in the next few decades
8.30 a.m .:
According to experts, a severe earthquake is very likely for the Istanbul region in the next few years or decades.
The last time there was a major earthquake there was in 1766, and since then tension has been building up, said Heidrun Kopp from the Geomar Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel of the dpa news agency.
There is now a movement deficit of up to four meters at this point in the North Anatolian fault zone.
"That's a lot in comparison."
"An earthquake there with a magnitude of up to 7.4 is overdue," said Marco Bohnhoff from the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) Potsdam.
Kopp explained that if the entire accumulated tension were to be relieved in one fell swoop, as was the case with the tremor in south-eastern Turkey, the consequences would be very serious in Istanbul as well.
Such tremors usually lead to a jerky complete dismantling.
In addition, with Istanbul, the megacity is almost directly on the fault line.
"The city center is only 25 kilometers away," said the Geomar researcher.
Since 1939, earthquakes along the fault zone have been coming closer and closer to Istanbul from east to west.
The city of Izmit, only 80 kilometers away, was last affected by a major earthquake in 1999.
Wissler criticizes the reaction of the Erdoğan government
8.25 a.m .:
The left chairwoman Janine Wissler has criticized the reaction of the Turkish government to the severe earthquake in the country.
There were increasing reports from Turkey that state civil protection was mainly active in the strongholds of the Islamic conservative governing party AKP, "but so far not enough in the Kurdish areas," Wissler told the AFP news agency.
There, “people are often left to their own devices”.
"Investigations were initiated against journalists who had pointed out failures in crisis management," said Wissler, who was in eastern Turkey at the time of the devastating earthquake.
"Critical reporting should be silenced."
With regard to the presidential elections in May, Wissler expressed concern that a state of emergency would be declared for three months in ten provinces affected by the earthquake.
"In the past, this has often served to repress the opposition, restrict freedom of assembly and arrest people without reasonable suspicion," she said.
"In view of the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 14, there is an acute danger that the state of emergency will be used to prevent the Turkish opposition from campaigning."
svs/dpa/AFP/Reuters