'In total, 5 thousand health personnel and nearly a thousand ambulances were transferred to the regions.' Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan elaborated on the nation's rescue efforts 'We have transferred 100 billion liras' worth of resources to the disposal of our institutions. 54 thousand tents and 102 thousand beds were sent to the victims. '53,317 search and rescue officers were directed to the region, this number is increasing with domestic and international support. Based on the authority given to us by Article 119 of the Constitution, we have decided to declare a state of emergency. 'We are declaring 10 provinces where the earthquake occurred as Disaster Areas Affecting General Life. Our biggest consolation is that more than 8 thousand of our citizens have been rescued from the rubble so far,' Erdogan said. 'We have 3549 deaths and 22,168 injuries. Let's get the aid out to the people who so desperately need it.'Įrdogan has announced an increase in the official death toll in Turkey and provided more details on the state of aid delivery in the southeast. 'It is imperative that everybody sees it as a humanitarian crisis where lives are at stake. 'There is a window of about seven days' when survivors are generally found, Laerke said, adding it was 'critical' to get teams to those in immediate need as soon as possible. Humanitarian aid in rebel-held areas usually arrives through Turkey via a cross-border mechanism created in 2014 by a UN Security Council resolution, but it is contested by Damascus and its ally Moscow and over time the number of crossing points has been reduced from four to one.Īreas now surrounding the one remaining border crossing have suffered significant infrastructure damage. 'The cross-border operation has itself been impacted,' Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva. The sole border crossing used to shuttle life-saving aid from Turkey into conflict-ravaged Syria has been severely damaged by the quakes, preventing aid from freely flowing across the border.
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