International
Tuquía declares three-month state of emergency
February 8th
The Turkish government has declared a three-month state of emergency in the ten provinces affected by Monday’s two powerful earthquakes, which have already killed at least 3,549 people and injured 22,000 in the country.
According to the latest casualty count, some 5,000 people have been killed and another 25,000 injured in the series of devastating tremors that have left thousands of buildings collapsed, where the search for survivors continues amid freezing temperatures.
In Turkey, the death toll stands at 3,549 while at least 1,500 people have been killed and more than 3,500 injured in Syria.
Some 50,000 people, including soldiers, are involved in rescue efforts and ten navy ships and 26 military aircraft are involved in evacuating the wounded.
In addition, dozens of countries have already begun to send hundreds of rescuers and experts in the search for survivors, although the cold and snow in the area, where there are also mountainous territories of difficult access, complicate the rescue tasks.
More than 8,000 people have been rescued in Turkey, according to government data, according to the official Anadolu agency.
In Hatay, some 170 kilometers south of where the first quake struck, rescuers managed to make contact with a family of four trapped in the rubble.
“We will get them out alive. We are here for that,” a member of the rescue teams was heard saying during a broadcast on broadcaster CNNTürk.
In Diyarbakir, some 350 kilometers east of the province where the first tremor had its epicenter, a woman was rescued after being trapped in the rubble of her home for 31 hours and taken to a hospital to the applause of emergency crews.
A 30-year-old man was rescued early this morning from a ten-story building that collapsed in Osmaniye province, about 135 kilometers from where the epicenter of the first 7.6 magnitude earthquake was recorded at 4:17 a.m. (01:17 GMT) Monday.
Twelve bodies have already been recovered from the same building, which contained 40 apartments.
A fourteen-year-old boy was found alive in Kahramanmaras province, where the first tremor struck.
“I’m hungry” was the first thing he told rescue teams, local media report.
First planes with international aid arrive in Damascus
In Syria, the official news agency SANA, with sources from the Ministry of Health, reported early this morning that the death toll in areas controlled by the government of President Bashar al-Assad. has risen to 769, while the number of wounded has risen to 1,448.
The most affected provinces are Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, the outskirts of Idlib and Tartus.
On the other hand, the White Helmets, a group of rescuers operating in opposition-held areas of Syria, said in its latest update that there are 740 dead and 2,100 wounded in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in the country, and in other parts of neighboring Aleppo that are also escaping Damascus’ control.
These opposition areas are bordering Turkey and are closer to the epicenter, so the difference in the balance could be due to their lower capacity to coordinate the count in the absence of a single government authority in charge of rescue operations.
The first planes carrying supplies and specialized personnel to assist in earthquake rescue efforts arrived today in Damascus government-held areas of Syria from Iraq, Iran, Algeria and Russia, according to the official Syrian news agency SANA.
Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Bassam Sabbagh, has assured that the Syrian government is “ready” to coordinate assistance to “the entire territory” of the country.
However, to the areas dominated by the opposition this aid is not expected to arrive.The White Helmets, have warned on Tuesday that “time is running out” for the “hundreds” of people who remain trapped.
This organization has appealed to the international community through its Twitter account, to provide material support and aid.”
Only 7 days to rescue survivors
According to a representative of the UN Humanitarian Aid Office, the first to act in cases of disaster, there is only a seven-day window to rescue people who have been buried under the rubble.
This estimate is the result of countless rescue operations around the world, although there may always be exceptions and the victims may have to endure a little more time, as the spokesman of that entity, Jens Laerke, commented when making a first assessment of the human cost of the tragedy.
To rescue the victims, the UN has mobilized disaster assessment and search and rescue teams, made up of the world’s best specialists in these tasks, who are traveling to Turkey.
“The big challenge right now is access by land (for these personnel and their teams) as many roads in the region have been destroyed by the earthquakes,” said Laerke.
Another difficulty is the lack of vehicles to transport the international experts, in response to which local authorities are mobilizing trucks from other provinces in Turkey.
Up to 145 tremors
The first major earthquake was recorded at 4.17 a.m. (01.17 GMT) and had a magnitude of 7.7, according to the Turkish emergency service Afad, with epicenter in Pazarcik in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaras.
As many as 145 more tremors followed, one of them of magnitude 7.6 at 10.24 GMT.
“Due to the fact that debris removal work is continuing in many buildings in the earthquake zone, we do not know how much the number of dead and injured will be,” acknowledged in his first statements the Turkish president, who has decreed seven days of national mourning throughout the country.
The earthquake was also strongly felt in Lebanon, including Beirut.
One of the symbols of the enormous destruction was the historic Roman castle of Gaziantep, which had stood for more than 1,700 years and was flattened by the quake.
The historic citadel of Aleppo in Syria, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was also damaged.
International
Austrian man arrested in Croatia with deceased woman as passenger in his car
A 65-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested at a border checkpoint in Croatia after attempting to enter the country in his car with a deceased woman sitting as a passenger, police announced on Tuesday.
The man was detained in a routine check in late November in Gunja, a border area separating Bosnia from Croatia, the police told AFP. Suspicious because they saw “no consciousness or movement” from the passenger, Croatian officers called a doctor, who confirmed the death of the 83-year-old woman, also Austrian, according to her identification.
The woman’s relationship to the suspect is unknown. She had died in Bosnia, and the man intended to repatriate her body to Austria to “avoid the formalities related to transporting a corpse,” according to the police. Croatian media reported that the man was her legal guardian.
Once her death was confirmed, a funeral service took charge of the body.
International
Colombian nationals arrested for human trafficking and disappearance of migrant boat
Colombian authorities arrested two nationals accused of the illegal trafficking of migrants to the United States and of endangering lives due to the disappearance of a boat with 40 people aboard, U.S. Department of Justice officials reported on Tuesday.
Hernando Manuel de la Cruz Rivera Orjuela, 52, and Luis Enrique Linero Pinto, 40, both Colombian citizens, were arrested on December 13 in Colombia at the request of the United States for their alleged involvement in a “transnational human trafficking operation,” the department said in a statement.
According to the charges, the detainees were transporting migrants to San Andrés Island in the Caribbean, where they would then be taken by boat to Nicaragua. The goal was to reach the United States through Central America and Mexico.
The accused are said to have advised the migrants on how to reach San Andrés Island, where they personally received them, arranged accommodations, and “took them to the boats that transported them to Nicaragua so they could enter the United States illegally,” the statement reads.
“These defendants put several migrants on the boat that disappeared off the coast of Nicaragua in 2023,” said Deputy Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, as cited in the statement.
Both men are “directly and personally responsible for the illicit trafficking of migrants on that vessel,” according to the indictment dated October 23.
International
Homemade landmine explosion in Michoacán kills two soldiers, injures five
Two soldiers were killed and five others were injured by the explosion of homemade landmines planted by a criminal group in a mountainous area of the Mexican state of Michoacán (west), the Secretary of Defense reported on Tuesday.
The attack occurred on Monday morning in the municipality of Cotija, a border area between Michoacán and the state of Jalisco, when the military was conducting a reconnaissance mission after receiving information about an armed camp in the area, explained Secretary General Ricardo Trevilla.
“At that moment, an improvised explosive device detonated. Unfortunately, two soldiers lost their lives, and five others were injured,” the military leader detailed. The affected soldiers were airlifted to hospitals in the region by a military helicopter, while the rest of the team continued with the reconnaissance of the area.
Trevilla stated that before the explosion, the military unit had located the dismembered bodies of three people, and upon continuing the mission, they confirmed the camp was abandoned.
Asked about the individuals responsible for placing the explosives, the general suggested they could be criminals linked to the local group Cárteles Unidos, which operates in Michoacán and uses these tactics in their territorial dispute with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the country.
Austrian man arrested in Croatia with deceased woman as passenger in his car
Colombian nationals arrested for human trafficking and disappearance of migrant boat
Homemade landmine explosion in Michoacán kills two soldiers, injures five
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