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Rescuers in the rubble in the Turkish earthquake area: "We do not know who fired the reported shots"
Photo: - / dpa
The Technical Relief Agency (THW) and the aid organization ISAR Germany (International Search and Rescue) as well as the Austrian Armed Forces are interrupting their rescue work in the earthquake area in Turkey due to safety concerns.
According to various information, the security situation in the Hatay region has changed in the past few hours, THW and ISAR announced on Saturday.
Search and rescue teams remained at the joint base camp in the city of Kirikhan for the time being.
If there is a concrete indication that someone can be saved alive, they will still drive out, said THW spokeswoman Katharina Garrecht.
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THW and ISAR also said with regard to the security situation: "The reason for this seems to be, among other things, the shortage of food and the difficult water supply in the earthquake area." ISAR operations manager Steven Bayer said: "It can be seen that the sadness is slowly giving way to anger .«
Increasing aggression
Tamara Schwarz, spokeswoman for the THW headquarters in Bonn, spoke of "tumultuous scenes".
The protection of the volunteers is now a priority.
However, the teams stayed put.
Soldiers from a disaster relief unit of the Austrian Armed Forces had previously stopped their rescue work in the province of Hatay.
»There is increasing aggression between groups in Turkey.
Shots are said to have been fired," said Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Kugelweis from the Austrian Armed Forces of the APA news agency.
According to information from the army, the Austrian disaster relief unit is also ready in a base camp together with numerous other aid organizations.
Since Tuesday, 82 soldiers of the so-called Austrian Forces Disaster Relief Unit (AFDRU) have been deployed and have so far recovered nine buried people.
Due to the security situation, there have been no more rescue operations since the early hours of Saturday morning.
When asked by SPIEGEL, a spokesman for the armed forces was unable to provide any information on which groups had aggressively opposed each other.
"We don't know who fired the reported shots," said Captain Marcel Taschwer.
In any case, Austrian soldiers were not affected, all the helpers are doing well.
The Austrian rescuers also remain on site and are available for further operations.
As soon as the security situation allows, according to Taschwer, they want to start again with rescue and recovery measures "soon".
The chances of survival are vanishingly small on day five after the natural disaster.
Normally, a person can go a maximum of 72 hours without water.
Added to this are the cool temperatures.
Occasionally there were still miracle reports on Saturday.
So far, more than 24,500 people have died in the Syrian-Turkish border area.
At least 21,000 people died in Turkey alone, and more than 3,500 in Syria. Almost 85,000 people were also injured in the two countries.
Thousands more are feared to die from the collapsed buildings.
A 7.7 magnitude tremor shook the border area early Monday morning, followed by another 7.6 magnitude tremor at noon.
Since then, there have been aftershocks in the region until Saturday morning in 1891, according to the Turkish civil protection authority Afad.
yeah/dpa
