Australia pledges $10 million in aid to Syria and Turkey as devastating earthquake kills thousands

Australia will commit an initial $10 million in humanitarian aid to Syria and Turkey amid devastating earthquakes that have claimed more than 3,700 lives so far. “Like all of the world, [our] thoughts and condolences are with the people in this region who are suffering at this time,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

In a joint statement with Foreign Minister Penny Wong, the federal government said it will provide $7 million in lifesaving assistance to Turkey, with $4 million allocated to the Red Cross and the remainder yet to be allocated. Syria will receive $3 million through UNICEF for immediate needs such as shelter, clean water and sanitation, with a focus on women and girls.

“We extend Australia’s deepest sympathies to families and communities that have lost loved ones, and those whose lives and livelihoods have been affected,” they said in a statement. The huge earthquake rocked Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday, with freezing winter weather adding to the plight of the thousands left injured or homeless and hampering efforts to find survivors. The magnitude 7.8 quake brought down whole apartment blocks in Turkish cities and piled more devastation on millions of Syrians displaced by years of war. It struck before sunrise in harsh weather and was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake.

In Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey, a woman speaking next to the wreckage of the seven-storey block where she lived said: “We were shaken like a cradle. There were nine of us at home. Two sons of mine are still in the rubble, I’m waiting for them.” She suffered a broken arm and had injuries to her face.

“It was like the apocalypse,” said Abdul Salam al-Mahmoud, a Syrian in the northern town of Atareb. “It’s bitterly cold and there’s heavy rain, and people need saving. The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the US Geological Survey since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.

In Turkey, the number of people killed stood at 2,316, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said, making it the country’s deadliest earthquake since a tremor of similar magnitude in 1999 devastated the heavily populated eastern Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, killing more than 17,000. At least 1,444 people were killed in Syria in Monday’s quake and about 3,500 injured, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue workers in the northwestern region controlled by insurgents.

“We have a patient who was taken into surgery but we don’t know what happened,” said Tulin, a woman in her 30s, standing outside the hospital, wiping away tears and praying. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the quake a historic disaster and the worst earthquake to hit the country since 1939, but said authorities were doing all they could. “Everyone is putting their heart and soul into efforts although the winter, cold weather and the earthquake happening during the night makes things more difficult,” he said. The second quake was big enough to bring down more buildings and, like the first, was felt across the region, endangering rescuers struggling to pull casualties from the rubble.

In Syria, already harmed by more than 11 years of civil war, the health ministry said 711 people had been killed. In the Syrian rebel-held northwest, emergency workers said 733 people had died. The United Nations says 4.1 million people, many of them displaced by the conflict and living in camps, depend already on cross-border humanitarian aid in northwest Syria and international support efforts are stretched and underfunded. “Syrian communities are simultaneously hit with an ongoing cholera outbreak and harsh winter events including heavy rain and snow over the weekend,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York. In the government-controlled city of Aleppo, footage on Twitter showed two neighbouring buildings collapsing one after the other, filling streets with billowing dust.

 

Two residents of the city, which has been heavily damaged in the war, said the buildings had fallen in the hours after the quake, which was felt as far away as Cyprus and Lebanon. In the Syrian government-held city of Hama, a Reuters journalist saw an apparently lifeless child carried from the ruins of a building.

In the rebel-held town of Jandaris in Aleppo province, a mound of concrete, steel rods and bundles of clothes lay where a multi-storey building once stood. “There were 12 families under there. Not a single one came out. Not one,” said a thin young man, his eyes wide open in shock and his hand bandaged. Raed al-Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets, a rescue service in rebel-held territory known for pulling people from the ruins of buildings destroyed by air strikes, said they were in “a race against time to save the lives of those under the rubble”.

Syrian state television showed rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss next steps, his office said. In the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, Reuters journalists saw dozens of rescue workers searching through a mound of debris, all that was left of a big building, and hauling off bits of wreckage as they looked for survivors. Occasionally they raised their hands and called for quiet, listening for sounds of life.

Source: sbs.com.au