Turkey-Syria earthquake: toddler rescued from rubble after three days as death toll nears 20,000 |

The combined death toll in Turkeyand Syria from Monday’s devastating earthquake rose to at least 19,823, after Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that 16,546 had died, while state media in Syria reported that the death toll in government-held areas had risen to 1,347. Earlier, the White Helmets civil defence group said 1,930 had been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country.
At least 28,044 people have been evacuated from Kahramanmaraş, one of the southern Turkish provinces hardest hit by Monday’s earthquake, including 23,437 by air and 4,607 by road and rail, Turkey’s disaster management agency said.
Rescuers continued to pull peoplewho have been trapped for days out of the rubble, including a young girl trapped for three days.
Turkey announced that it hadreceived pledges of aid from 95 countries and 16 international organisations since Monday, and 6,479 rescue workers from 56 countries were already active in the 10 provinces affected by the quake, with teams from 19 more countries set to be in place within 24 hours.
France announced €12m in emergency post-earthquake aid to Syrians, with the aid to be disbursed “through non-governmental organisations and the UN in all regions affected”, while Germany said it would increase humanitarian assistance in Syria by €26m.
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AHAD, said it has recorded almost 650 aftershocks since two earthquakes – 7.8 and 7.6 in magnitude – struck, making rescue efforts even more difficult and dangerous as emergency teams comb through severely weakened buildings.
A Reuters report shed light on howhundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the quake are being housed in banks of tents erected in stadiums and shattered city centres, while Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts outside the quake zone are opening up hotel rooms for evacuees.
The UN will dispatch its aid chief, Martin Griffiths, to Gaziantep, in Turkey, and Aleppo and Damascus, in Syria, this weekend to assess how the UN can best step up support, according to UN secretary-general, António Guterres, who also urged the Syrian government to allow aid-access to the country’s rebel-held north-west.