This was stated by the head of humanitarian services. At the moment, some 29,000 deaths are officially recorded.
As the death toll from the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria approaches 29,000 people, the head of the UN humanitarian services, Martin Griffiths, issued a strong warning and predicted that the final number of victims “is going to double or even more.”
The UN representative made the remarks in an interview with Sky News on Saturday while visiting Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, the epicenter of the 7.7-magnitude quake that struck southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria.
“I think it is difficult to estimate (the deceased) accurately since you have to get under the ruins, but I’m sure they’re going to double or even more,” Griffiths said.
“We haven’t really started counting the death toll yet.”, said the expert when pointing out that entire towns have been reduced to rubble. “It is the most disastrous earthquake in a hundred years,” he summed up.
In Turkish territory, the authorities have so far recorded 24,617 deaths and more than 80,000 injuries, making the earthquakes registered this week the most devastating since 1939.
“We have failed Syria”
In the midst of the disaster, Griffiths applauded the efforts of the international community, with dozens of countries offering help to Turkey, and called on the Damascus government to take more steps to support opposition areas after authorizing the arrival of international humanitarian aid.
In Syria, immersed in a civil war for 12 years, the earthquake hit government areas but also others in the hands of the opposition. There the balance of deaths this Sunday stands at 3,575 and that of wounded is around 5,300, registered mostly in the opposition areas in the northwest of the Arab country, where yesterday the group of rescuers White Helmets ended the search for survivors.
“Until now we have failed the people in northwestern Syria. They rightly feel abandoned, looking for international help that has not arrived,” Griffiths said on his Twitter account, indicating that he is on the Turkish-Syrian divide, without specifying which side.
Since the earthquake last Monday, the group of rescuers White Helmets denounce that they have not received help from the United Nations in the opposition areas of northwest Syria, difficult to access since it can only be reached through a single border crossing, the Bab el Hawa, which connects Turkey with the Syrian province of Idlib.
Even the leader of the rescue group, Raed Saleh, said on Friday that “the UN bureaucracy participated in the slaughter of the Syrian people”. Faced with the barrage of criticism against the United Nations, Griffiths indicated on Twitter that his “duty and obligation is to correct this failure as quickly as we can.”
The first UN humanitarian aid convoy arrived in northwest Syria last Thursday, almost four days after the earthquakes that devastated this region of the Arab country, but The shipment did not include food or machinery for the rescue work.
In fact, it was not until yesterday, Saturday, when the first convoy of the organization arrived with specific supplies for those affected by the earthquake in the rebel areas and the third of the organization that entered Bab al Hawa since the initial earthquake registered at dawn on Monday
According to data from that organization, 2,167 people died and 2,950 were injured in the rebel areas of the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, to which another 1,408 deaths and 2,341 injured were added in the areas in the hands of the Government of Bashar al Asad.