ANTAKYA: Rescue efforts in earthquake-hit Türkiye were winding down on Sunday (Feb 19), nearly two weeks after the country’s deadliest disaster in the modern era, with many praying only for bodies to mourn.
“Would you pray to find a dead body? We do … to deliver the body to the family,” said bulldozer operator Akin Bozkurt as his machine clawed at the rubble of a destroyed building in the town of Kahramanmaras.
“You recover a body from under tonnes of rubble. Families are waiting with hope,” Bozkurt said. “They want to have a burial ceremony. They want a grave.”
According to Islamic tradition, the dead should be buried as quickly as possible.
The head of Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), Yunus Sezer, said the search and rescue efforts would largely end on Sunday night.
More than 46,000 people have been killed after the quake struck Türkiye and Syria on Feb 6. The toll is expected to climb, with about 345,000 apartments in Türkiye now known to have been destroyed and many people still missing.
Neither Türkiye nor Syria has said how many people are still unaccounted for following the quake.
Orhan Tatar, General Director of Earthquake and Risk Reduction at Türkiye’s Disaster Management at AFAD, reiterated on Sunday that the Eastern Anatolian Fault broke apart in five different branches, with 25km of fractures measured in the province of Malatya alone.
About 400km of surface fractures and deformation on the earth’s crust resulted in large shifts, with the largest measured at 7.3m with a depth of 8km to 9km.
In one of the last efforts to pull people out of the rubble 12 days after the earthquake, emergency teams on Saturday night began clearing debris with their hands at a rescue site in Antakya.
Search dogs and thermal cameras had detected signs of life from two people, rescuers said, but just after midnight, eight hours into the operation, the teams called off the rescue.
“No one is alive,” said Mujdat Erdogan, a member of AFAD, his face and uniform covered in dust. “I don’t think we can rescue people anymore.”
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