ALI KUCUKGOCMEN and HENRIETTE CHACAR
SIX people were killed in the latest earthquake to strike the border region of Turkey and Syria, authorities said, two weeks after a massive quake killed more than 47,000 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes.
Monday’s quake of magnitude 6.4, which hit just as the rescue work from the initial devastating earthquake was winding down, was centred near the Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.
It was followed by 90 aftershocks, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said, adding fresh trauma to Antakya residents left homeless and living in tents by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6.
“To me this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. I felt that we were going to die, that we would be buried here,” said 47-year-old blacksmith Murat Vural.
He called his friend shortly after Monday’s quake to tell him they should leave town. “This is no longer a place we can remain,” he said. “We are mostly worried for our lives.”
More than 41,000 people were killed in Turkey in the initial quake, officials say, while the toll in neighbouring Syria stands at around 6,000.
President Tayyip Erdogan’s government has faced criticism about what many Turks said was a slow response, and over construction policies that meant thousands of apartment buildings collapsed, trapping victims under the rubble.
“It is our duty to hold the wrongdoers accountable before the law,” Erdogan said in the southern province of Osmaniye.
In power for two decades, he faces presidential and parliamentary elections in May, although the disaster could prompt a delay. Even before the quakes, opinion polls showed he was under pressure from a cost of living crisis, which could worsen as the disaster has disrupted agricultural production.
SWIFT REBUILD PROMISED
Erdogan has promised a swift reconstruction effort, although experts say it could be a recipe for another disaster if safety steps are sacrificed in the race to rebuild.
“We won’t run away from the ballot box or disregard democracy,” said Devlet Bahceli, an Erdogan ally and leader of the nationalist party MHP, adding that the opposition was “obsessed and delusional” for criticising the government’s earthquake response and for discussing the election timing.
“Turkey … will bury you at the ballot box soon,” he said.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 294 people had been injured in the latest quake, adding that patients were evacuated from some health facilities that had remained in operation after the first quakes, as buildings cracked.
In Antakya, one man hugged and consoled another who was crying after news about people killed in the already shattered city after they had entered a building to retrieve possessions when the latest earthquake struck, bringing the structure down.
A rescue team lowered one of the dead, covered in a yellow bag, down a ladder from the destroyed apartment block, before it was placed in a coffin to be transported in a municipal van.
In Syria, already shattered by more than a decade of war, most deaths have been in the northwest, where the United Nations said 4,525 people were killed. The area is controlled by insurgents at war with President Bashar al-Assad.
Syria said 1,414 people were killed in areas under government control.
