Turkey-Syria Earthquake Death Toll Passes 16,000

By Staff, Agencies

Rescue teams continued searching for survivors buried in the rubble of thousands of buildings destroyed in Turkey and Syria by disastrous earthquakes that killed more than 16,000.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday visited a "tent city" in Kahramanmaras, where people forced from their homes are living.  He conceded "shortcomings" but vowed that no one would "be left in the streets."

Turkey now has tens of thousands of aid personnel in the quake zone, and search teams from about thirty countries have joined them. But with the damage so widespread, many are still waiting for help. And an unknown number of people are still trapped under the rubble.

The sprawling scale of the disaster that flattened thousands of buildings has swamped relief operations already hampered by freezing weather, AFP reported.

Survivors have been left to scramble for food and shelter -- and in some cases watch helplessly as their relatives called for rescue, and eventually went silent under the debris.

Still, searchers kept pulling survivors from the debris three days after the 7.8 magnitude quake that is already one of the deadliest this century, even as the death toll continues to rise.

The window for rescuers to find survivors is narrowing as the effort nears the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives, according to AFP.

Yet on Wednesday, rescuers pulled children from under a collapsed building in the hard-hit Turkish province of Hatay, where whole stretches of towns have been leveled.

Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Turkey and at least 2,992 in Syria from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the total to over 15,000 -- but that could yet double if the worst fears of experts are realized.

The issue of aid to Syria was a delicate one, and Damascus made an official plea to the EU for help, the bloc's commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarcic said.

The European Commission is "encouraging" EU member countries to respond to Syria's request for medical supplies and food, Lenarcic noted.

Dozens of nations, including the United States, China and the Persian Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived.

The European Union was swift to dispatch rescue teams to Turkey after the massive earthquake struck the country on Monday close to the border with Syria.

But it initially offered only minimal assistance to Syria because of EU sanctions imposed since 2011 on Assad's government.

In Brussels, the EU is planning a donor conference in March to mobilize international aid for Syria and Turkey.

Due to the scale of the damage and the lack of help coming to certain areas, survivors said they felt alone in responding to the disaster.

The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world's most active earthquake zones.

Monday's quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in eastern Erzincan province.

In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000.