SW News: In quake-ravaged Turkey and Syria, the death toll has crossed more than 9000 and tens of thousands of people have been injured. Three days after the calamity, thinly stretched rescue workers are battling odds to find survivors and pull out bodies from underneath the rubble.

In northern Syria and southern Turkey, rescue operations are continuing in search of survivors and human remains. On the internet, videos of entire apartment complexes collapsing in the wink of an eye are circulating and so are video clips of survivors being rescued such as six members of a family who were pulled out of the rubble by White Helmet volunteers in Syria’s Idlib. In Syria, the government has said that there were 2000 casualties while the actual figure could be higher.

According to Turkish media reports, the epicenter of the tremor was Kahramanmaras where the disaster took the lives of 1,243 people and in Hatay, which suffered the maximum damage, 1,647 people were killed. Many people are trapped under the rubble in Hatay where the airport runway suffered damage, affecting the landing of aircraft carrying rescue workers and equipment.

There was a fire in Iskenderun port as containers got toppled in the quake. On Feb 7, there was an aftershock measuring 5.3 on the Richter Scale in Adiyaman. In that area, more than 800 people were killed. Survivors are on the streets calling out the names of relatives and friends hoping that they are alive under the debris. The freezing conditions are also aggravating the tragedy, forcing many people who lost their homes to light bonfires on the streets to stay warm at night.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a state of emergency in the quake-hit areas of Turkey and he himself visited the region on Wednesday. Many countries, including Ukraine, have stepped in to supply humanitarian aid comprising, medicines, medical equipment and personnel as well as rescue workers and sniffer dogs to locate survivors and bodies beneath the rubble.