Turkey/Syria: Number of earthquake victims rises to 50,000

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Debris in Antakya, Turkey: With the balloons, an aid organization commemorates the children who died in the earthquake series

Photo: IMAGO / IMAGO/Kyodo News

Two and a half weeks after the earthquake disaster in the Turkish-Syrian border area, the number of dead has risen to more than 50,000.

In Turkey alone there were 44,218 victims, reports the Turkish disaster agency Afad.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported 5,900 deaths from Syria.

The activists of the Syrian Observatory even assumed more than 6,700 dead in the evening.

Hundreds of seriously injured people are still in mortal danger.

And the earthquake region on the border between Turkey and Syria has still not come to rest.

A 5.2-magnitude tremor hit the central Anatolian province of Niğde in Turkey on Saturday, according to the Kandilli earthquake monitor.

The epicenter was therefore in the district of Bor. Shortly before, according to the Turkish civil protection authority Afad, there had been several earthquakes of magnitude 4.

Initially, there was no information on casualties or damage.

More than 60 aftershocks were recorded from Syrian locations within 24 hours, the country's earthquake center announced on Saturday.

Two earthquakes were reported in neighboring Iraq, the state news agency Ina reported.

According to the Rudaw news site, they had a magnitude of 4.3 and 4.0.

There were initially no reports of casualties or damage.

According to the Turkish government, 20 million people in the country are affected by the effects of the earthquake series.

The UN assumes that 8.8 million people will be affected in Syria.

The earthquake areas were initially difficult to access, but salvage work is continuing, so that more and more victims are being discovered.

There have been no more reports of the rescue of survivors in the past few days.

Architects: Government has put many lives at risk through building policy

The series began on February 6, when two earthquakes measuring 7.7 and a little later 7.6 shook southeast Turkey and northern Syria.

This was followed by more than 9,000 aftershocks, according to Turkish sources.

According to the UN, the earthquake disaster was not only the worst in Turkish history in terms of fatalities.

The mountains of rubble and rubble are also unprecedented, said Louisa Vinton, the representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Turkey.

According to the Turkish government, more than 173,000 buildings have been registered as having collapsed or been badly damaged.

According to Afad, almost two million people were housed in tents and other emergency shelters.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, there are 100,000 homeless people in Syria after the earthquake.

In more than 123 places in the country, houses are damaged or completely destroyed.

Many power plants, power lines, schools and hospitals were also affected.

The Turkish Chamber of Architects TMMOB blames the government for the extent of the catastrophe.

Because they subsequently legalized thousands of unauthorized buildings, the leadership in Ankara put the lives of many people at risk.

According to the TMMOB, almost half of the buildings in the region affected by the earthquake were built after 2001 - a time when strict building regulations for earthquake safety were already in force.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and government officials had dismissed such criticism.

In Turkey, eleven provinces are affected by the earthquake, in Syria the north-west.

There is only scant information about the situation from the civil war country.

Faced with years of bombing and fighting, many people there were already living in terrible conditions before the tremors.

mamk/dpa