Turkiye-Syria Quake: Toll Nears 24,000, Syria Says US Move To Ease Sanctions 'Deceptive' — Top Points

The earthquake fatalities in Turkiye rose to 20,213 and in Syria, over 3,500 were reported dead. Tayyip Erdogan said that authorities should have acted faster while also slamming "negative campaigns".

New Delhi: The confirmed death toll from the deadly earthquake in southern Turkiye and northwest Syria has risen to more than 23,700 four days after the calamity. This comes as rescue efforts are underway and several people continue to be pulled out of rubbles of collapsed buildings.

According to news agency Reuters, rescue crews on Friday saved a 10-day-old baby and his mother trapped in the ruins of a building in Turkiye. Meanwhile, Turkiye's President Tayyip Erdogan said that authorities should have acted faster to the calamity.

The condition of hundreds of thousands of people rendered homeless has been worsened by the shortage of food in bleak winter conditions as leaders in both countries are being questioned about their response.

US Eases Sanctions On Syria, Erdogan Slams 'Negative Campaigns For Political Interest' — Top Points

• The number of deaths in Turkiye rose to 20,213 on Friday, as per the country's health minister. In Syria, more than 3,500 were reported dead while many more people remain under rubble in both countries.


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  Notably, the US has temporarily eased its sanctions on Syria in an effort to speed up aid deliveries to the country’s northwest, where almost no humanitarian assistance has arrived, The Guardian reported. The US Treasury late on Thursday announced a 180-day exemption to its sanctions on Syria for “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts”.

  
  


• However, the Syrian government called the announcement "misleading". "The American administration cannot deceive the Syrians and the world by trying to beautify its image and evade its responsibility for obstructing the rescue of the affected people. Its new misleading decision is a repeat of previous sham decisions aimed at giving a false humanitarian impression, as it stipulated exceptions that were proven false by facts," the statement, originally given in Arabic, mentioned.
  
  


• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first reported visit to affected areas since the earthquake, visiting a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, Reuters cited state media as reporting.
  
  


• The Syrian government has approved humanitarian aid deliveries across the frontlines of the country's 12-year civil war. The World Food Programme earlier informed that it was running out of stocks in rebel-held northwest Syria as the state of war complicated relief efforts.


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  Turkiye's Erdogan on Friday visited Adiyaman province and acknowledged that the government's response was not as fast as it could have been. "Although we have the largest search and rescue team in the world right now, it is a reality that search efforts are not as fast as we wanted them to be," he said, as quoted by Reuters.
  
  He mentioned that looting of shops had taken place in some areas.

  
  


• Erdogan, who looks to get reelected in a vote scheduled for May 14, called for solidarity while condemning what he described as "negative campaigns for political interest". This came as Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of Turkiye's main opposition party, criticised the government's response.
  

  "The earthquake was huge, but what was much bigger than the earthquake was the lack of coordination, lack of planning and incompetence," Kilicdaroglu said in a statement, as quoted by Reuters.

  
  


• In freezing temperatures, rescue teams from dozens of countries are toiling night and day in the ruins of wrecked buildings to find buried survivors.
  
  In Turkiye's Samandag district, rescuers whispered "Inshallah" (God willing) as they carefully reached into the rubble and picked out a 10-day-old newborn. His eyes open, baby Yagiz Ulas was wrapped in a thermal blanket and carried to a field hospital, Reuters reported.
  
  Emergency workers also found his mother, dazed and pale but conscious on a stretcher.

The earthquake, which struck in the early hours of Monday, is the seventh most deadly natural disaster of this century, ahead of Japan's 2011 tremor and tsunami. The death toll is nearing the 31,000 killed by a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.

The death toll from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and its powerful aftershocks across both countries has surpassed the 17,000 fatalities in 1999 when a similarly powerful earthquake hit northwest Turkiye.