The death toll in Turkey and Syria of the five-day earthquake that struck last week surpassed 16,000, according to the Associated Press

The death toll of the huge earthquake that hit a region of Turkey and Syria five days ago had surpassed 25,000 by Saturday as more survivors, including entire families, were pulled from the rubble.

In other parts of Syria controlled by the government, the Syrian Health Ministry said more than 1,200 people have died from the earthquake. The overall death toll across Syria and Turkey has passed 16,000, according to The Associated Press. Tens of thousands more have been injured.

Erdogan and aid workers said the scale of the quake was so large that it was difficult to reach everyone everywhere. Erdogan said nobody would be “left in the streets.”

Hamideh and her family lived in the building that used to be the seven-story residential building in the city which is now known as Anakya.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have been displaced by an earthquake in Turkey since the 2004 April 11 earthquake and Syrian buildings are destroyed, according to an expert

Four days after the earthquake, the UN began to distribute aid at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing in northwest Syria. The first delivery of aid carrying tents, shelter materials and basic relief items had been scheduled before the earthquake. We did not get any help with our rescue efforts.

70 countries and 14 international organizations have quickly offered teams of rescuers in Turkey, which is very different to the situation in Syria.

Turkey’s emergency management agency reported that they have set up more than 70,000 tents for people who have been displaced by the disaster.

Researchers say that people need to protect themselves from earthquakes and weather changes. “The possibility for major aftershocks causing even more damage will continue for weeks and months,” says Ilan Kelman, who studies disasters and health at University College London.

There are two giant plates underneath Turkey’s southeastern provinces. Along this fault line, “about 100 miles from one side to the other, the earth slipped,” Myers continued.

In 1999, a magnitude-7.4 earthquake hit 11 kilometres southeast of Izmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people and leaving more than 250,000 homeless. After this tragedy, the Turkish government introduced new building codes and a compulsory earthquake insurance system. It turns out that many of the buildings damaged by this week’s earthquake were built before 2000.

In a study that was published last March, Arzu Arslan Kelam at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, and her colleagues suggested that the centre of Gaziantep could be damaged by a magnitude-6.5 earthquake. This is because most existing buildings are low-rise brick structures that are constructed very close to each other.

The conflict has made building standards impossible to enforce in Syria. Buildings collapsed in the northwestern regions of Syria because of the earthquake. Some war-damaged buildings in Syria have been rebuilt using low-quality materials or “whatever materials are available”, says Rothery. “They might have fallen down more readily than things that were built at somewhat greater expense. He says that they have yet to find out.

“The weather forecast for the region for tonight is dropping below freezing. People trapped in the rubble who might be rescued, are likely to freeze to death. So these hazards continue,” he adds.

A convoy of trucks carrying shelter items crossed between Turkey and Syria in the wake of the Syrian-Mişraev-Karabah conflict

They arrived in the van, wrapped in body bags, blue tarps and colorful blankets. The names of those who were killed in the conflict were written on pieces of paper that family members were going to receive from the Syrians at the other side of the border.

Ever since Syrians began fleeing the war to neighboring countries, many have been returned upon their deaths through border crossings like Bab al-Hawa to be buried in their hometowns, according to the wishes of the dead or their families.

They planned to bury Yara in a village cemetery near where her grandmother, Mr. al-Yousef’s aunt, lives. There, as in nearly every cemetery in northern Syria, a handful of grave plots are always dug and ready for the next dead, in a part of the country where death often came from the skies — and not from underground.

“Those who died, we want them to come back,” said Mr. al-Yousef, who lives in a tent camp near the Syrian town of Sarmada on the border. “We want them to be buried among their family.”

His cousin and his family fled their small village in Syria’s Hama Province in 2013 when shelling and airstrikes intensified, moving to another part of Syria closer to the border with Turkey. Soon after, they crossed over to Turkey because Yara’s father could not find work in Syria.

Over 12 years of a civil war that has still not ended, nearly four million Syrians fled to the relative safety of neighboring Turkey. More than 10 million people sought refuge in Jordan and Lebanon.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Thursday’s convoy, made up of six trucks carrying shelter items and Non Food Items, crossed through the Bab al-Hawa crossing – the only humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and Syria.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Damascus was able to report that the roads to the border crossing were open on Wednesday morning and that the first aid convoy was expected to arrive in the coming hours.

Cross-Border Aid to Syria During the September 11quake: Two Million People in Idlib, the One Reachable Channel of Humanity in Syria

Rescue workers continued to search and recover as Muslim funeral prayers were held constantly across northwestern Syria, sometimes behind mounds of rubble.

When the van pulled up, the men surged forward, running, and crowded around the back of the vehicle. A border worker began calling out the names of the dead.

For nearly two hours Mr. al-Yousef and his aunt waited at the crossing, experiencing a wave of disappointment each time new bodies arrived and their young relative was not among them.

Mr Yousef and his aunt drove through villages and towns where people’s family members were trapped under the rubble, waiting to be rescued or recovered.

On Wednesday, they were informed that Yara’s body would be delayed in its return to Syria: They would wait to recover her parent’s bodies and that of her brother and return them together.

Conditions for the 10.9 million people affected by the disaster in Syria are being further hit as fresh snowfall worsened the situation further for people across five governorates, according to the UN.

The cross-border aid operation has been restored. We are happy that we are able to help people in northwest Syria. OCHA Trkiye’s Sanjana Quazi hopes that this operation will continue as it’s a humanitarian lifeline and the only reachable channel.

The delivery ended a three-day period during which no aid arrived – just 300 bodies, according to the administration that controls the only access point between the two countries.

Immediately after the quake, the United Nations said roads to the crossing were blocked, but as of Wednesday they were clear, raising questions as to why it was taking so long for help to arrive.

The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of killing his own people. The Foreign Minister of Syria says any aid it gets must go through Damascus.

Abu Muhammad Sakhour, a former merchant, is volunteering as a nurse in the rebel-held city of Idlib, dressing wounds for quake victims and checking up on the injured who have been discharged from crowded hospitals.

The Independent Doctor’s Association member is living out of his car in Gaziantep, with his family, while in close contact with colleagues in Syria. He said hospitals there have been overwhelmed with bodies, and staff are waiting for families to come and identify them, so they can be taken away.

The families who were homeless after the earthquake in Syria are now back in their homes. The United Nations says up to 2000 deaths have been reported.

There were no international crews of rescuers, no trucks loaded with machinery or medical aid, and no streams of ambulances on the visit to this rebel-held enclave. There was no one crossing into Syria.

They don’t need the politics. We don’t need the game playing that’s going on. What we do need is for the international community to focus on the border crossing staying open,” Barnes added. We are going into the humanitarian phase because we are past the first phase of finding people. We need to provide people with basic shelter, food, and water.”

The number of people who were in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake stood at 15.3 million – but that number will now have to be revised, UN Resident Coordinator for Syria, El-Mostafa Benlamlih said.

There is a homeless person sleeping in a car in northern Syria, an aid worker told CNN on Thursday.

But the Syrian government says it needs more – and has called for sanctions placed on the country to be lifted. A number of Western countries have imposed bans on trade with Syria, including weapons, equipment, petrochemicals and luxury goods.

Mao said that the US has been involved in the Syrian crisis for a long time. The people of Syria are in a difficult position because of the frequent military interventions and harsh economic sanctions.

“He is using the disaster as a ticket to remove sanctions,” said Omar Abu Layla, executive director of Deir Ezzor 24, a research organization that delivers news from Syria’s Deir al-Zour province. If we would like to bring aid to Syria, we can. Time is of paramount importance. We are playing with our lives.

“It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters Monday.

The UN’s failure to respond quickly to this catastrophe is shameful. When I asked the UN why help had failed to arrive in time, the answer I received was bureaucracy. In the face of one of the deadliest catastrophes to strike the world in years, it seems the UN’s hands were tied by red tape.

Millions of people were already struggling with extreme poverty when the earthquake hit, and aid groups such as the UN were needed to help them.

Meanwhile, “Syrians don’t know where their next meal comes from. It’s not about meat or vegetables when we say meal. Moutaz Adham, country director for Syria for Oxfam, said it was about simple bread.

The aftermath of the 2006 earthquake left Syria’s most livable civilians out of financial ruin and its hardest hit by civilians. A phone conversation with NPR

Rescue teams are still looking for signs of life in the ruins of collapsed buildings, but there is less chance of finding someone alive with every passing hour.

Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. Out-of-control inflation has already hurt the Turkish economy.

The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is Great. In a rebel-held area of northwest Syria, volunteers and civil defense groups pull a boy out of the rubble.

NPR was able to speak to him on the phone. He spoke from Jinderes, which is located in the part of the country that’s under opposition control. He said countless buildings there have collapsed. People are in the streets in the freezing cold, waiting for aid to arrive. Aftershocks have made buildings still standing unlivable.

“Humanitarian aid and international aid haven’t appeared 72 hours after the catastrophic earthquake,” he said, describing the little help that is trickling into the region as a haphazard grassroots effort by individual groups.

Civil defense groups are carrying out rescue efforts, and civilians are trying to help. Everyone is waiting for international rescue and aid to be able to process what has happened.

Our hope of finding survivors has faded. As we pull more dead bodies from the rubble, my heart breaks for every soul that could have been saved and was needlessly lost because we did not get the help we needed in time.

In northwestern Syria, the situation is particularly dire because of the lack of heavy machinery to lift rubble. Power outages have resulted in fuel shortages in hospitals.

Using World Relief Funds for Natural Disasters to Help Haiti’s Earthquake Victims: How Do Cities, Schools, Nongovernmental Organizations and Cultural Associations Help?

Ozel points out that national funds meant for natural disasters were instead used for highway construction projects owned by people associated with the coalition government.

After a catastrophic earthquake in northwestern Turkey killed more than 18,000 people in 1999, authorities imposed an earthquake tax meant to corral billions of dollars’ worth of disaster prevention and relief.

There have been restrictions on how individual cities and aid organizations can work in Turkey due to the centralization of the government. (Turkey’s embassies, meanwhile, along with an array of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations, are collecting donations internationally.)

With an election expected by June, Ozel says Erdogan has already been weakened by out-of-control inflation in Turkey. “I would expect the government to actually be one of the victims under the rubble of this earthquake,” Ozel predicts.

An 18-year-old high school student has been working diligently for three days to aid the people of Haiti. Schools have been ordered closed so that people like Korkmaz are able to help out, after the devastating earthquake.

“We’ve managed to load 18 semitrucks and send them to the earthquake zone. They’re filled with blankets, clothes, but there is a more urgent need for food,” he says, as he loads a box underneath a banner with the image of Erdogan hanging from the ceiling. “However we can get it to them, it doesn’t matter. People there need food.”

When asked if Erdogan’s government has done enough to help the victims, Soleymez says, “They’ve done what they’re able to do. This is a time to help people who need it not a time to discuss politics.

The aftermath of a seismic earthquake in Turkey: How many buildings have been constructed and how many are they failing to conform to modern seismic codes?

The region experienced a number of aftershocks in the immediate hours after the initial incident. A magnitude 6.7 aftershock followed 11 minutes after the first quake hit, but the largest temblor, which measured 7.5 in magnitude, struck about nine hours later. More than 125 aftershocks have been recorded so far.

Rescue and recovery efforts on both sides of the border have become more difficult because of the poor conditions caused by the cold and wet weather system.

Erdik told CNN the images of widespread destruction and debris indicates “that there are highly variable qualities of designs and construction.” He says the type of structural failures that happen after earthquakes are usually partial collapses. “Total collapses are something you always try to avoid both in codes and the actual design,” he added.

But not all buildings have been built according to the modern Turkish seismic standard, Jaiswal said. Older buildings are more susceptible to the severity of shocks due to deficiencies in design and construction.

Erdik also said he believed many of the buildings that have collapsed were likely “built pre-1999 or … with older codes.” He added there also would have been instances where some buildings didn’t conform to code.

Code compliance is an issue that we have tried to tackle with legal and administrative procedures, due to the fact that the codes are very modern in Turkey. He told us what he was saying. Controls for construction and design are contained in the permits from the municipalities. But then again, there are things that are lacking.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/middleeast/earthquake-turkey-syria-why-deadly-intl/index.html

Why the Epi-Line is Deadly in the Middle East? CNN Observations on a “Turkey” Earthquake in Syria

He told CNN that the community and citizens are the first line of defense. They excavated family, friends, neighbors.

He added: “Time is always the enemy, as seen in Turkey and Syria. The people die because of immediate medical needs such as bleeding to death or succumbing to crush injuries, and also because of the weather, which has dropped below freezing at night and is cold during the day, so people die. Food and water isn’t enough for many when they are waiting for rescue.

The ground shaking is caused by a slip on the fault according to the US Geological Survey. The outer layer of the earth exerts stress on the sides of the fault. Stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the earth’s crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake.”

The term “Richter Scale”, which scientists used for many years, is no longer used as of late, but they use the modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale, which is a better measure of a quake’s size.

The power of an earthquake is known as magnitude. Depending on the geography and depths of the quake, the shaking intensity can be different. On the magnitude scale, each increase of one whole number translates to 32 times more energy.

It is the strongest earthquake since an 8.1 magnitude one hit a region in the southern Atlantic ocean in 2021, though the remote location of that event did not result in any damage.

CNN’s meteorologist and severe weather expert Chad Myers said, “we always talk about the epicenter, but in this case we should talk about the epi-line.”

This is unlike the Ring of Fire, which runs along the west coast of the United States. In this area, earthquakes are sometimes caused by subduction, where one plate slides below another.

But in a “strike slip,” the plates move horizontally, rather than vertically. “Why that matters is because the buildings don’t want to go back and forth. And then the secondary waves begin to go back and forth as well,” Myers added.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/middleeast/earthquake-turkey-syria-why-deadly-intl/index.html

The 2004 Indonesian earthquake that crushed the lives of a soldier in shock: Mohammed Juma, his wife, Alia, and his two-year-old son Abdulhadi

More than 200,000 people were killed or left missing when a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, in 2004.

The country’s worst nuclear disaster on record happened after walls of water engulfed entire towns and dragged houses onto highways.

Temperatures remained below freezing across the large region, and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has provided food, tents and blankets, but is trying to reach many people in need.

Assad told reporters that the western countries have no regard for the human condition. This comment is in line with statements heard from government officials and Syria’s state-run media, who have pinned the lack of humanitarian aid and hindered rescue equipment on US and EU sanctions.

Assad and his wife, Asma, visited different sites affected by the earthquake and visited survivors at a hospital in Aleppo, pictures on state-run news agency SANA showed.

JINDERIS, Syria — Mohammed Juma sleeps on the heap of rubble that crushed his family as he survived. In the freezing nights, the 20-year-old and others in this town — still dazed and in shock — burn possessions found in the debris for heat.

Without the necessary equipment and machinery, residents in the northwest of Syria heard the screams of those trapped under the rubble but were powerless to save them.

Mohammed Juma said his wife, Alia, and his two children — 20-month old Ali and 6-month old Hussein — were alive after their home collapsed on top of them. Juma and his neighbors pulled at the shattered concrete for hours until their hands bled, but the effort was futile.

The Syrians use a few excavators to recover the dead. On Friday morning in Jinderis, at least 850 bodies had been pulled from the rubble. Zakaria Tabakh, 26, remembers cuddling his son, 2-year-old Abdulhadi, to sleep and laying him in his bed, where he was killed by the falling debris. Tabakh and his wife were dead in the bed. He said that few friends were able to come to the burial because they were too busy burying their own loved ones.

They have been left with nothing after many years of war. Tens of thousands now live with almost no access to basic services in makeshift tents set up in the olive groves where the mud clogs and weighs down the legs of children playing outside.

Less than one hour’s drive from one of the open border crossings, the town of Sawran now has no running water. On one side of the main street is the destroyed home of the Turki family, where nine people, including five children died. A family of seven were killed across the road. The Syrian government attacked the population with the nerve agent sarin in 2017, killing 89 people, and neighbors fled their home in Khan Sheikhoun to Sawran.

The rescue of the Narli family from central Kahramanmaras, which was broadcast on Turkish television, happened 133 hours after the earthquake. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was saved, then both of her parents.

That followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, TV network HaberTurk reported. Rescuers chanted, “God is great!” The last member to be lifted to safety was the father.

The impact of quake-shock-induced deaths on the lives of toddlers and children in Islahiye and Hatay provinces

“In some parts of our settlements close to the fault line, we can say that almost no stone was left standing,” he said earlier Saturday from Diyarbakir.

Melisa Ulku, a woman in her 20s, was extricated from the rubble in Elbistan in the 132th hour since the quake, following the rescue of another person at the same site in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was on a stretcher and covered in a thermal blanket. Rescuers were hugging. Some shouted that God is great.

Just an hour earlier, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and soon after a 7-year-old girl was rescued in the province of Hatay.

The rescues brought joy even though thousands were killed in the earthquake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse.

Not everything ended well. Rescuers in Hatay province were able to reach a 13-year-old girl inside the rubble of a collapsed building early Saturday. But she died before the medical teams could amputate a limb and free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.

As aid continued to arrive, a 99-member group from the Indian Army’s medical assistance team began treating the injured in a temporary field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun, where a main hospital was demolished.

He said that he had been rescued from his collapsed apartment building in the nearby city of Antakya within hours of the earthquake on Monday. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without getting proper treatment for his injuries.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors

First Day of Operation of a Graveyard in Antakya: The World Health Organization’s Head of the United Nations in Aleppo

″I buried (everyone that I lost), then I came here,” Canbulat said, counting his dead relatives: “My daughter is dead, my sibling died, my aunt and her daughter died, and the wife of her son” who was 8 ½ months pregnant.

A graveyard is under construction on the outskirts of Antakya. The northeastern edge of the city had pits dug by backhoe and bulldozers for trucks and ambulances to dump body bags in. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photographs.

A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who did not wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media said that around 800 bodies were brought the cemetery on Friday, its first day of operation. He said as many as 2,000 had been buried by noon on Saturday.

“People who are coming out from the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survive. Most of the people that come out now are dead, and they come here,” he said.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, arrived in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, bringing with him 35 tons of medical equipment, state news agency SANA reported. He said another plane will land in the near future with an additional 30 tons of medical equipment.

A mourning father of his 15-year-old daughter under the quake epicenter: Irmak’s hand photo in a Turkish city

He was photographed holding the hand of his 15-year-old daughter, Irmak, under the rubble in the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the quake. He said she died at the moment it hit, with no chance of escape.

Hancer is grieving not only for his daughter. The earthquake struck when members of his family had traveled across Turkey to his mother’s house, where his daughter was staying.

I didn’t have any hope because there was a girder on my daughter. Her waist up was free but below her waist under the rubble,” she was crushed, he said. “Unfortunately, during the earthquake, she died right there and then. She couldn’t have had a chance of survival.

“I also talked with AFAD The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency in Turkey helped as much as they could. Hancer said that they weren’t able to provide an excavator to that area.

“My mother, my two older brothers, my sister-in-law and her little daughter. My daughter was among seven people. They were all under the rubble,” Hancer said.

He said that Hancer doesn’t have a place to stay because his home has been badly damaged. We don’t have enough money to enter our house. We are left outside.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/middleeast/turkey-quake-man-daughter-hand-photo-intl/index.html

White Helmets in Syria: How the United Nations can stop Assad from acting badly on the Syrian people during the Earthquake?

Meanwhile, amid growing public anger over the government’s response to the disaster, Turkish authorities have carried out a wave of arrests of property developers accused of “negligence” over building collapses due to last week’s earthquake.

Editor’s Note: Raed Al Saleh is head of The White Helmets, a group of nearly 3,000 volunteers working to save lives and strengthen communities in Syria. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

Our team of White Helmets volunteer rescue workers in northwest Syria have been working around the clock night and day, pulling survivors from the rubble and searching for signs of life — with virtually no help from the outside world.

We are the only organization here with the equipment and training to undertake heavy search and rescue. The volunteers have been doing the impossible, and I am humbled by their selflessness and dedication.

Assad’s intervention is a cynical move that has come far too late. The UN’s insistence on waiting for the Syrian regime’s permission — the very regime that has bombed, gassed, starved, forcibly displaced and imprisoned millions of Syrians — is unforgivable. The Syrian regime is not a credible partner when it comes to addressing the suffering of all Syrians.

The UN was asking the Security Council for aid to be accessed through two additional border crossings, which wasted time and was misguided. Legal analysts and scholars argue against it, as humanitarian organizations say the need is too high to be politicized.

The UN needs to do better. If the system that was supposed to save people’s lives during an emergency leaves a child to die under the rubble, this is clearly a broken system.

Russia uses its veto at the Security Council to make it more difficult for aid to be delivered to Turkey using a single entry. Opening additional crossings on a temporary basis is not enough — more cross-border routes were already sorely needed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/opinions/white-helmets-syria-united-nations-earthquake-al-saleh/index.html

Hakan Yasinolu, 45, was freed from the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey

The local communities that were affected by the disaster lent their cars and vehicles to the response, helping them dig, and donating fuel to keep themselves warm as we searched through the rubble.

There is not more time to waste. The UN secretary-general needs the vision and leadership to help him on the right side of history. Humanitarian aid should not be restricted in the future by the Security Council or the regime. Guterres should immediately ensure that the United Nations and international aid agencies have unhindered humanitarian access to ensure more lives are not lost.

The survivor was extricated from the rubble of the collapsed building in the district of Defne, in Hatay province, more than a week after the earthquake.

Hakan Yasinoğlu, 45, spent 278 hours beneath the rubble, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. There was TV footage of him being carried on a stretcher.

Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras, after being trapped for 258 hours, private DHA news agency reported late Thursday.

The UN-FaO and FAO-UN Humanitarian Response to the Earthquake: Implications for Syrian Refugees in Turkey

A spokesman for the UN said that the trucks were carrying “a lot” of items from six UN agencies. They crossed through the border gates of Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam, he said.

Meanwhile, The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkey to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.

In Syria, the agency said that the earthquakes may cause major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity and threaten immediate and long term food security.

The decision allows holders of Turkish temporary protection cards residing in earthquake-damaged areas to cross into Syria without having to obtain a travel permit from Turkish authorities. Syrians in protected status who crossed into Syria without a permit would normally be considered asylum-seekers by Turkey. They would have to give up their cards and be banned from reentering Turkey for five years.

Spain says it will take in some 100 Syrian refugees in Turkey that have suffered in the earthquake. Migration Minister José Luis Escrivá said the refugees would be those considered most vulnerable and badly affected by the quake.

Turkish vice president Fuat Oktay said that the state was looking for 1,589 children who had been separated from their families in the earthquake.