In Turkey, 12,391 people were killed and more than 62,000 injured, according to a tally released by the state-run news agency early Thursday. At least three U.S. citizens were among the dead in southeastern Turkey, the State Department said Wednesday.
“We are working closely with local authorities and other partner organizations to assist any U.S. citizens in the affected areas,” a State Department spokesperson said. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no additional details at this time.”
On a visit to Hatay, one of the most devastated provinces, Erdogan pledged that ruined cities and towns would be rebuilt in a year, though the task will be enormous — the tally of collapsed buildings has risen to more than 6,444, he said.
Earlier, in Kahramanmaras, the city at the earthquake’s epicenter, Erdogan struck a note of reassurance. “Our citizens should not worry; we will never let them remain unsheltered,” he said, describing plans to help the newly homeless by making hotel beds available.
The state air carrier, Turkish Airlines, said it had evacuated almost 20,000 people from the disaster zone, with an additional 30,000 passengers slated to fly that day. The U.S. Embassy in Ankara on Wednesday advised U.S. citizens who wish to leave quake-affected areas to go directly to one of six airports still operating in the region, where airlines were offering free or reduced-fare flights, and to “bring food and water.”
President Biden, speaking at an event in Wisconsin on Wednesday, said the United States remains “steadfast” in its commitment to supporting recovery efforts in Turkey and Syria.
“We mourn the loss of so many lives, and we offer our deepest condolences,” he said.
The Pentagon said it moved some U.S. troops to support relief efforts in Turkey, including a team deployed from U.S. European Command in Germany. U.S. aircraft at the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey also transported first responders “to the most impacted populations,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters at a briefing Wednesday.
As donations poured in from around the world, aid groups said that the needs are overwhelming. In the ruined city of Adiyaman in the southeast, chaotic and makeshift distribution areas for humanitarian supplies sprang up along the central boulevard Wednesday.
A huge line of people formed at the entrance to the town to take rations of water that were being handed out. At another aid point near the city center, Esref Tuncer, 60, showed up hoping to find blankets, but walked away with some thin-looking socks and two sweaters instead.
Other families raced around him, trying to secure one of the large tents sent by Turkey’s disaster management authority, as scuffles broke out around the truck.
Erdogan said Wednesday that the Turkish government would distribute 10,000 Turkish lira, or $530, to “each of our families,” but it was not immediately clear who would be eligible for the aid or how they would claim it.
The president has faced growing criticism over the government’s response to the quake, with residents in some areas complaining of slow rescue efforts and a lack of shelter in freezing weather. As the outrage mounted online Wednesday, Turkish users reported problems accessing Twitter.
The government regularly restricts social media access during emergencies but did not say whether it had blocked the platform Wednesday. Erdogan denounced the criticism, saying he “cannot stomach people conducting negative campaigns.”
Across the border, in government-controlled areas of Syria, at least 1,262 people were killed in the quakes, and another 2,285 were wounded, state media reported Wednesday. Meanwhile, in the beleaguered rebel-held northwest, rescue workers said they had recorded more than 1,700 deaths and 2,900 injuries.
They also found the bodies of their own amid the rubble. The Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, which operates in areas outside government control, said Wednesday that four of its volunteers, and their families, were among the quake victims.
Doctors Without Borders said one of its employees was found dead under the rubble of his home in Idlib province. “We are very shocked and saddened by the impact of this disaster on the thousands of people touched by it, including our colleagues and their families,” Sebastien Gay, head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in Syria, said in a statement.
Rescue workers have traveled from around the world to aid in the effort, a process quickened by the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism, which allowed the body to coordinate the deployment of more than 1,100 rescuers from 21 countries.
Syria tried to do the same on Wednesday, but it was unclear to what effect. President Bashar al-Assad’s government has been a pariah among many Western governments, which have accused him of crimes against humanity for bombarding densely populated civilian areas, including the medical facilities that serve them, throughout the war.
In the rebel-held pocket in the northwest, no aid has crossed the border since the earthquakes. The U.N. humanitarian affairs agency said Wednesday that it was preparing the first cross-border convoy, but that the operation was “temporarily disrupted” by damage to the road connecting Gaziantep to the U.N. transshipment hub in Hatay.
“We have a glimmer of hope that we can reach people,” Muhannad Hadi, the agency’s regional coordinator for Syria, said at a briefing.
The United Nation said just 5 percent of quake-affected sites in rebel-held Syria were being covered by search-and-rescue operations.
Yet the needs are overwhelming on both sides of the conflict line.
“Almost 90 percent of the population depends on humanitarian action,” said Fabrizio Carboni, Near and Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross. “Just a couple of weeks ago, we were engaged in a cholera response, then there’s the climate crisis, too. The list of humanitarian challenges, even taken in isolation, would be huge. And they are coming one after the other.”
The World Health Organization warned on Wednesday of a “huge, long-term” impact on health care in Turkey and Syria and said there was a need to prevent a potential surge of respiratory infections.
WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told Sky News that aid groups were sending supplies for surgical and trauma care as rescuers continued to pull people from the rubble. But the specter of a broader health crisis was also looming, she said, making it important to quickly provide other health services, including wheelchairs and medicine for chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension.
“There’s so much long-term change to people’s health,” she said. “We saw a baby that was born under the rubble yesterday. Babies will be born in the next few days to people sheltering in cars.” Harris said early assessments showed damage to at least 15 hospitals and hundreds of health facilities across the two countries.
In Turkey, the health minister said Wednesday that 77 field hospitals were set up in 10 regions across the south. “We’ve got to look at preventing infectious diseases,” Harris said. “People are crowded together in the cold in difficult circumstances whose immune system is under tremendous stress.”
Loveluck reported from Baghdad, Fahim and Karatas from Adiyaman, Turkey, Cunningham from Washington, and Sands and Francis from London. Amar Nadhir in Bucharest, Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, and Paulina Villegas and Missy Khamvongsa in Washington contributed to this report.
