Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Feb 9: The death toll from the sprawling scale of the disaster that flattened thousands of buildings, trapping unknown number of people has reached 15,000.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday conceded ‘shortcomings’ after criticism of his government’s response to the massive earthquake that has killed over 15,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
As criticism mounted online, Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit spots, quake epicentre Kahramanmaras, and acknowledged problems in the response.
“Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this,” he said.
Twitter was also not working on Turkish mobile networks, according to AFP journalists and NetBlocks web monitoring group.
Reportedly, the relief operations are already hampered by the freezing weather. 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 ruins.
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 count 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. 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 levelled.
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 15,383 and experts fear the number will continue to rise harshly.
Dozens of nations, including the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived.
Notably, 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.
