The death toll from the earthquakes that struck southern Turkey rose to 31,643, while the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, AFAD, announced the evacuation of 147,934 people from the affected areas.
The number of earthquake victims that struck southern Turkey rose to 31,643, and 147,934 people were evacuated from the affected areas.
The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, AFAD, added that search and rescue work is continuing to rescue those trapped under the rubble.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the earthquake-wounded in the Basaksehir Cham Saqura Medical City in Istanbul.
Erdogan expressed his wishes for a speedy recovery for the earthquake victims, and the Turkish president was briefed by doctors on the health conditions of the wounded.
Erdogan was accompanied on his inspection visit by his wife, Amina Erdogan, the governor of Istanbul, Ali Yerlikaya, and the city's health director, Kamal Memishoglu.
Earlier on Saturday, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, from Hatay province in southern Turkey, said that additional doctors and medical personnel had been appointed in the earthquake-affected areas, and that the medical staff was working at full capacity.
The magnitude of the earthquake that struck Kahramanmaraş in southern Turkey last Monday is equivalent to 500 atomic bombs, according to Orhan Tatar, Director General of the Earthquake and Risk Reduction Department at the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD).
Tatar said in televised statements on Saturday that the energy emitted from the first earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.7 and lasted 65 seconds, is equivalent to 500 atomic bombs.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in statements during his inspection of the earthquake areas in Sanliurfa province that the Turkish government provided aid worth 15,000 Turkish liras to each family affected by the earthquake.
He pointed out that the Turkish government is taking measures that would alleviate the problems of the victims and facilitate their lives. He mentioned that 460,000 citizens are currently residing in schools, training hotels and teachers' residences belonging to the Ministry of National Education. He confirmed that 1.1 million people live in temporary shelters.
In statements Sunday from the state of Adi Yaman, the Turkish Minister of Transport, Adel Kara Ismailoglu, said that they are doing their utmost to save the earthquake victims, warning of the spread of many media misinformation operations on social media, and asking citizens not to listen to these false campaigns.
Turkish Minister of Transport, Adel Kara Ismailoglu: We are doing our best to save earthquake victims through social media. Many media misinformation operations are spreading, and we ask everyone not to listen to these false campaigns pic.twitter.com/mprIujBznA
In a related context, the Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Wahid Kreishji, confirmed that the dams in the earthquake areas were not damaged.
The minister said that the areas affected by the earthquakes include 110 dams and 30 lakes, adding: "There is nothing that threatens the safety of dams in our facilities."
At dawn on Monday, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit southern Turkey and northern Syria, followed hours later by another with a magnitude of 7.6 and hundreds of violent aftershocks, which left huge losses of lives and property in both countries.
Continuous work and lack of equipment The effects of earthquakes exacerbate the suffering of medical staff in Syria
Since the dawn of last Monday, the medical teams in Syria have struggled to save as many people as they can from the earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, despite the lack of capabilities and the great size of the disaster. They work for long hours continuously, and some of them suffer from sleep difficulties.
For three days, following the devastating earthquakes, the anesthesia technician, Abdul Baset Khalil, did not stop assisting hundreds of injured people who flocked to the hospital where he works in northwestern Syria, while his wife and two daughters were under the rubble, only to be found dead later.
Like Khalil, since the devastating earthquakes that struck Syria and its epicenter in neighboring Turkey, the medical staff have gone through difficult days, with the loss of family members, professional colleagues and friends, while they are forced to perform their duties in treating the victims of the disaster in hospitals that mainly suffer from a lack of resources and capabilities.
Khalil, 50, an employee at the hospital in the border city of Harem with Turkey, told AFP: "I was helping people in the hospital, while my wife and two daughters were under the rubble, and I could not provide anything for them," at a close distance from him.
After the earthquakes, Khalil left the hospital to the outside yard, to find the adjacent building where his house was located collapsed on top of his family.
Helpless in front of the piles of rubble, he returned to the hospital under the influence of shock, while the injured arrived successively to receive treatment, in addition to the bodies of the victims, including the administrative director of the hospital and the head of the nursing department in it.
The first day passed heavy for Khalil, who recalls those moments, "It was a very hard and difficult day. I felt that it was equivalent to fifty years." On the next two days, Khalil took advantage of some moments when the number of new arrivals had decreased to inspect the rubble-clearing work. "The situation remained the same until Wednesday," when the bodies of his family members were exhumed, he added.
Words fail to express the pain in Khalil's heart and his feeling of "complete inability to provide any assistance to my family," but he finds some consolation in being able to bury them, as he will be able to "always visit" them, at a time when hundreds of families are still under the rubble.
Since burying his family, Khalil has had great difficulty sleeping "because of the horror of the scenes" he witnessed and the loss of his loved ones. He flips through pictures on his phone of him standing on top of the rubble during searches and remembers the calls from his daughter, who often called him to urge him to come home. However, his grief did not prevent him from resuming work in the hospital after three days. "I am now on top of my work to help the citizens," he explains.
'catastrophic results'
Shortly after the earthquake occurred, ambulances rushed successively to Harem Hospital, which exceeded its capacity.
Dr. Muhammad al-Badr, a general surgeon, explains that the hospital in Idlib is a field hospital established to treat injuries resulting from air strikes, explaining that its capabilities are "modest" and cannot accommodate more than thirty patients. But the number of infected people exceeded that many times over. "It got to the point where the injured lay on the ground in the halls and corridors," he explains.
The hospital received about 2,500 injured people, 390 of whom died, according to Hassan al-Hamdo, an orthopedic surgeon.
Like other hospitals in the region, the hospital suffers from a shortage of supplies and equipment. Al-Hamdo says, "The hospital received many cases that needed imaging via a CT scan machine, which is not available" in the entire region.
In a report published on Friday, the International Rescue Committee warned of the collapse of the health system in northwest Syria. It said in a statement that medical facilities "lack urgent medical supplies, such as serums, painkillers, medical bandages and blood bags, with other urgent needs including fuel for generators and burial bags."
"The number of patients will increase because those who survived the disaster are left in freezing temperatures after their homes are destroyed," she predicted, adding, "Unless we urgently get more funding, supplies and unfettered access to humanitarian aid, the results will be catastrophic."
"Out of service"
Also in Salqin City Hospital in Idlib, orthopedic surgeon Hassan Joulak explains that the hospital is currently providing care for between 800 and 1,000 injured people, especially those who complain of fractures that need periodic reviews, after the number of injured as a result of the earthquakes far exceeded its capacity.
The long years of war in Syria since 2011 depleted medical facilities and led to the destruction of a large number of them, especially in the areas under the control of the opposition factions in the northwest of the country.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly fifty percent of health facilities in the country are out of service, while those that are operating complain of a shortage of equipment, medical personnel, and medicines.
In areas controlled by the Syrian regime, hospitals also suffer, albeit to a lesser extent, from a shortage of skilled doctors and equipment to deal with a disaster similar to an earthquake, in addition to a number of them being affected by the repercussions of the disaster.
The coastal city of Jableh, one of the badly affected cities, lost five doctors in the earthquake, which damaged key medical equipment in its national hospital, according to its director, Muhammad al-Khalil.
The medical staff has been working in the hospital without interruption since the earthquakes, exceeding its capacity, at a time when many of its members have lost their homes, while the homes of others are at risk of collapsing and have been evacuated from them.