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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
The Pope’s funeral procession through the center of Rome worries the Italian authorities
The complexity of the transfer of Pope Francis’ coffin through the center of Rome, from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried, is the main concern for the Italian authorities, the head of Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, acknowledged on Thursday.
That part of the device, which will take place on Saturday after the funeral, presents important logistical, infrastructure and security challenges, the official admitted at a press conference, in which he also said that the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel before, about 61,000, will increase in the coming hours.
On Saturday, after the funeral, his body will be taken in a vehicle in a solemn passage to the Roman basilica of Santa María La Mayor, to be buried in a chapel, as the Argentine pontiff arranged in life, which will collapse the center of the Italian capital.
“I remember that the burial ceremony will be a private ceremony, while immediately after the faithful will be given the opportunity to reach the side of their holiness, and obviously the sustained concentration of faithful must be taken into great consideration,” said Ciciliano.
The route of this funeral procession, which will extend over six kilometers, will be analyzed today in a meeting by those responsible for the organization, who are carrying out a “complete evaluation”.
Ciciliano focused on the exceptional fact that Francisco’s death has coincided with the Jubilee year, and that this is also a time when Rome is usually full of tourists, so it is difficult to estimate the number of people who will attend to follow the funeral.
Despite warning that parallels cannot be established with the death of John Paul II in 2005, Ciciliano reiterated that “we are estimating around 200,000 people, although we do not know if they will be deployed in St. Peter’s Square or along the funeral procession” to Santa María la Mayor.
Meanwhile, the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel of Pope Francis, which until 1:00 p.m. this Thursday already amounted to 61,000, will rise significantly in the next few hours, until Friday it closes at 19.00 (17.00 GMT) for the ceremony of closing the coffin before the funeral on Saturday, he anticipated.
The person in charge drew attention to the significant drop in temperatures at night, so he called on the faithful to dress like “an onion” to be able to add or remove layers as needed.
Regarding the arrival of new faithful in Rome, he said that there are 260,000 seats available to travel by train, and that on the day of the funeral about 500 buses to the Italian capital are expected to arrive.
“There will be state, commercial and private flights that will arrive at Fiumicino and Ciampino airports. We have also maintained Pratica di Mare as an airfield,” he added.
He also referred to the reception of the hundreds of world leaders and authorities who will be in Rome to attend the funeral, including the president of the United States or the kings of Spain, which he considered “very complex.”
The preparations “are being developed in close collaboration with the Prefecture of Rome for those aspects related to security, since there are elements that overlap,” he said.
This difficulty grows due to the fact that after the funerals most of these leaders will return immediately, but others prefer to stay in the city.
After the funeral, the second phase of the Civil Protection deployment will be activated, which includes the conclave to elect the new pope, when the forecasts point to an even greater number of faithful, which will also coincide with other massive events such as the final of the Soccer Cup on May 14.
A group of the poor and a delegation of migrants will participate in the funeral and burial of the pope on Saturday
A group of poor and needy and a delegation of migrants and rescuers will be present at the funeral and burial of Pope Francis this Saturday, April 26, as a last tribute to the pontiff, who was always close to the most disadvantaged and homeless people.
“A group of poor and needy people will be present on the steps that lead to the Papal Basilica of Santa María la Mayor to pay the last tribute to Pope Francis before the burial of the coffin,” the Vatican reported in a statement on Thursday.
The Arab League supports Hamas handing over control of Gaza and weapons to the Palestinian Authority
The Arab League expressed on Thursday its support for the Hamas Islamist group handing over control of the Gaza Strip to the Government of the Palestinian National Authority (ANPA), of President Mahmud Abbas, who assured that he must be the only one who controls weapons and represents the Palestinians before the international community.
The pan-Arab organization expressed its position on Thursday in a statement issued after the Arab ministerial meeting held on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, coinciding with a claim by Abbas that the ANP assumes political control of Gaza, and that Hamas releases the 59 Israeli hostages it still holds and lay down their arms.
“The Council of the Arab League affirmed its support for President Mahmoud Abbas’ vision regarding the importance of achieving national (Palestinian) unity based on the commitment to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” the main member of the ANP that governs in small areas of the occupied West Bank, said the statement of the organization composed of 22 states.
In the note, the agency avoided mentioning Hamas by name, although it stressed that the PLO is the “only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, and invited all Palestinian factions to “comply with the political program and international obligations” of the ANP.
He also insisted that the different Palestinian factions “comply with the principle of a (only) system (of government), a law and a legitimate weapon, and allow the Government (of the ANP) to assume the responsibilities of governance in Gaza within the framework of the political and geographical unity of the Palestinian territory occupied (by Israel) in 1967”.
On the other hand, the statement “categorically rejected any form of displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, under any name, circumstance or justification, considering this part of the crime of genocide” against the inhabitants of the strip, where more than 51,000 people died in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
The Arab Foreign Ministers expressed, on the other hand, their support for the conference that France and Saudi Arabia plan to hold next June under the auspices of the UN to support the “two-state solution”, one Palestinian next to the Israeli.
They also showed their support for the Egyptian plan, supported last March by Arab and Islamic countries, for the reconstruction of Gaza, and “urging countries and financial institutions to quickly provide the financial support necessary for its implementation.”
Hamas has controlled Gaza since its militiamen expelled the forces of the ANP Government from the Strip in 2007, controlled by the secular group Fatah, also from Abbas and majority within the PLO.
The enmity between Hamas and Fatah resides, in addition to ideological differences, in the discrepancies that when facing the defense of a Palestinian State, since while Islamists advocate armed struggle and “resistance” against the Israeli occupation, the ANP opts for politics and negotiations.
