On Saturday, two German emergency relief organizations working in the Hatay region, one of the areas in southeastern Turkey hit by Monday’s major earthquake, halted their activities due to security concerns, they explained that there have been violent clashes between different groups of people, during which shots have also been fired, and now they are waiting for the Turkish Civil Defense to give them the go-ahead to resume their search in the rubble safely.
«Food is running out, water is running out and people are out looking for them», he said to the news agency Reuters Steven Bayer, director of operations of German International Search and Rescue (ISAR), to explain the reasons for the tensions between the population: “And then hope is slowly fading, and it is also turning into anger”. Currently both the ISAR team and that of the Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk (THW), the German Civil Protection, are in their field of work waiting to resume operations, but always available to provide medical assistance. Even the Austrian Forces Disaster Relief Unit (AFDRU), the emergency relief unit of the Austrian army working in Antioch, had interrupted its operations for security reasons but then resumed them.
The Turkish authorities have not reported any clashes in the Hatay region, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said on Saturday that there were cases of looting in buildings in the areas affected by the earthquake, promising punishments for those responsible. Turkish state media reported the arrest of 48 people on looting charges; firearms, cash, jewelry and credit cards were allegedly confiscated from those arrested. Twelve people accused of having responsibility for the collapse of various buildings in the regions of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa were also arrested. On Saturday evening, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said that a total of 113 arrest warrants had been issued on charges related to the construction of the buildings destroyed by the earthquake – at least six thousand.
Many of the buildings that collapsed in the earthquake had been built in the past decades, and therefore did not comply with earthquake standards, but many that were built in recent years, when Turkish building regulations required strict standards, also collapsed. For this reason, the Turkish government has already been criticized for the consequences of the earthquake.
According to the latest count released by the Turkish authorities, more than 24,600 people died in the earthquake in Turkey. No updates on the number of deaths have arrived from Syria since Friday: according to the latest data released, there are at least 3,500, therefore the total number of people who died from the earthquake in the two countries is more than 28,000. Still alive on Sunday morning in Turkey people were found still alive under the rubble – a 35-year-old man spent 149 hours buried under a building in Hatay – but the finds of survivors are increasingly rare.
Martin Griffiths, head of the United Nations Emergency and Humanitarian Aid Office, told the Al Jazeera that the number of deaths from the earthquake could even double in the next few days: “We haven’t even started counting the number of dead people”.