Four pulled from rubble in Turkey as earthquake rescue efforts pass 200-hour mark

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Four more people have been rescued almost 200 hours after a massive earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, but hopes are dwindling of finding more survivors of what the World Health Organization called Europe’s worst natural disaster in 100 years.

As the first UN aid team since the quake entered north-west Syria, the combined death toll rose to almost 38,000 on Tuesday after the tally in Turkey climbed to 31,974. At least 5,714 are reported dead in government-controlled and rebel-held areas of Syria – which is likely to be a significant underestimate.

Muhammed Cafer, 18, was lifted from rubble in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, and could be seen moving his fingers, CNN Turk said, soon after Muhammed Yeninar, 17, and his bother Baki, 21, were found alive in another part of the southern Turkish region.

Turkey’s TRT Haber reported that a man had been pulled alive from the ruins of an apartment block in the southern Hatay province 203 hours after the first 7.8-magnitude quake struck.

Some teams, however, are winding down operations as subzero temperatures reduce the already slim chances of survival. The UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said the rescue phase was “coming to a close”, with the focus now turning to shelter and food.

The WHO’s Europe director, Hans Kluge, said relief workers were facing “the worst natural disaster in the region for a century”, adding that the full magnitude was not yet known and recovery would take “a phenomenal effort”.

Kluge said three charter flights with emergency medical kits had been dispatched to Syria and Turkey – enough to treat 400,000 people – and 22 teams from 19 countries deployed in the largest operation of its kind in the organisation’s 75-year history.

More than a week after the quakes, there were “growing concerns over emerging health issues linked to the cold weather, hygiene and sanitation, and to the spread of infectious diseases, with vulnerable people especially at risk”, he said.

In Turkey alone, an estimated 1 million people have lost their homes and are living in tents and temporary shelters, while authorities have said at least 80,000 people have been hospitalised. Up to 5 million people may be homeless in Syria, many of them already internally displaced after having fled nearly 12 years of civil war.

The UN children’s agency, Unicef, said on Tuesday that more than 7 million children had been affected by the quake and “many thousands” had died. “Even without verified numbers, it is tragically clear that numbers will continue to grow,” a spokesperson said.

“Tens of thousands of families are exposed to the elements when temperatures are bitingly cold, and snow and freezing rain are common,” the spokesperson told reporters in Geneva, adding that the final death toll would be “mind-boggling”.

The first UN delegation to visit rebel-held north-western Syria since last week’s earthquake crossed over from Turkey on Tuesday, AFP reported, and aimed to assess humanitarian and food needs in an area where 90% of the population – about 4 million people – were depending on aid even before the disaster.

Activists and relief teams in the opposition-controlled north-west have decried the UN’s slow response to the quake in rebel-held areas, contrasting it with the planeloads of aid delivered to government-controlled airports.

The UN said it welcomed a decision by the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, on Monday to open two more border crossings to allow aid from Turkey into the north of the country, where the international relief effort has been slow and complicated.

In Turkey, meanwhile, the vice-president, Fuat Oktay, on Tuesday denied reports of food and aid shortages. There were “no problems with feeding the public” and “millions of blankets are being sent to all areas”, he said.

Turks and rescue workers have criticised a lack of emergency supplies and equipment including water, food, medicine, body bags and cranes in the days after the quake, with many decrying a slow and inadequate response by Turkey’s disaster agency.

“People are not dead because of the earthquake, they are dead because of precautions that weren’t taken earlier,” Said Qudsi, who travelled to Kahramanmara? to bury his uncle, aunt and their two sons, told a Reuters reporter.

The Turkish president, Tayyip Recep Erdo?an, who faces a tight election in June, has acknowledged problems in the initial response, but appeared to blame fate for the disaster and insisted the situation was now under control.