Türkiye-Syria Quake: UN Warns About Urgent Need Of Food; Death Toll Soars Over 24,000

Türkiye-Syria Quake: Amid the hit of one of the deadliest earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, the confirmed death toll stood approx 24,000 today. While battling with bone-chilling cold weather and quake, hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to be in urgent need of food and shelter.

Monday’s quake of magnitude 7.8 has upturned millions of lives in the pre-dawn hours in the eastern city of Kahramanmaras of Türkiye.

United Nations warns over urgent need for food

Taking notes from the situation prevailing in both countries, the United Nations has warned that at least 8, 70,000 people are now in urgent need of hot meals across Türkiye and Syria.  More than 5.3 million people may have been made homeless in Syria.

Speaking to the media, the Syrian representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sivanka Dhanapala said, “That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement.”

‘Miracle Rescue’

Despite the tragic devastation, miraculous rescues continued more than 100 hours after the first tremor tore apart roads and flattened hundreds of buildings while a winter storm raged over the region.

According to a Turkish news agency, a pregnant woman named Zahide Kaya was pulled out of the rubble alive after 115 hours, in the Nurdagi district of Gaziantep province, southeastern Türkiye.

Her six-year-old daughter named Kubra was rescued from the ruins an hour earlier. The mother was injured and taken to hospital, but there was no immediate word on her unborn child, the agency reported.

Also Read: Türkiye President Calls Quake “Disaster Of The Century” As Death Toll Reaches 21,000

Ceasefire call by the UN

The United Nation’s rights chief has called for an immediate ceasefire in Syria so aid could reach all victims of the earthquake.

Some four million people in the rebel-held northwest rely on humanitarian aid but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks. Only two aid convoys have reached the region this week from Turkey, where authorities are engaged in an even bigger quake relief operation of their own.

The UN Security Council will meet in Syria, possibly early next week.

Five days of grief and anguish have been slowly building into a rage at the poor quality of buildings and the Turkish government’s response in the face of the country’s most dire disaster in nearly a century.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan conceded for the first time that his government was not able to reach and help the victims “as quickly as we had desired.”