CNN
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More than a week after the devastating magnitude 7.8 quake, rescuers in southern Turkey say voices continue to be heard under the rubble, offering a glimmer of hope that more survivors will be found. I’m here.
Live images broadcast on CNN affiliate CNN Tak showed rescue teams operating in two areas of the Kahramanmaras region, trying to save three sisters believed to be buried under rubble. board.
In the same area, paramedics rescued a 35-year-old woman who was believed to have been buried for about 205 hours, according to state broadcaster TRT Haber.
Two brothers, 17-year-old Muhammad Enes Yeninah and 21-year-old brother Abdelbaki Yennir, were also dragged from the collapsed building on Tuesday, the station reported. Further east, in the city of Adiyaman, rescuers rescued an 18-year-old boy and a man from the rubble, according to CNN Tak, while in Hatay province in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian rescuers rescued a woman from the rubble. I pulled it up.
Eight days after the quake and its violent aftershocks, more than 41,200 people have been confirmed dead in Turkey and Syria, and stories of survival are fading.
UNICEF fears that even without confirmed figures, it is “tragically evident” that the number of children dying after the earthquake “continues to rise.”
UN Children’s Agency spokesman James Elder said 4.6 million children live in the 10 disaster-hit provinces of Turkey and 2.5 million children are affected in Syria. .
As relief efforts begin to shift to recovery efforts, UN officials are rushing to focus aid on Syrian survivors through two new government-approved border crossings in Damascus.
The United Nations said on Monday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had opened the “two crossroads of Bab al-Salaam and al-Rayi” between Turkey and northwestern Syria to “allow for timely deliveries” for the first time. He welcomed the decision to open it up for “three months.” of humanitarian aid. ”
Eleven trucks laden with UN aid crossed into northwestern Syria via the Bab al-Salaam corridor on Tuesday, the UN aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted, adding 26 more trucks. have entered the area via the Bab al-Hawa intersection.
then the news came UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday that two new border crossings receiving assistance from Turkey inside Syria were “open and goods are flowing”.
Mr. Guterres emphasized that man-made obstacles to access, funding and supplies should not exacerbate the human suffering of this natural disaster.
The United Nations has launched a three-month, $397 million humanitarian appeal to victims of the Syrian earthquake and will finalize a similar appeal to survivors in Turkey, Guterres said.
International aid is slow to reach rebel-held areas of northern and northwestern Syria. This has led to further difficulties for survivors who lack food, shelter, and medicine to combat the conditions of .
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad said last week that any aid the country receives must go through the capital Damascus. However, with the measures imposed on the Assad regime after leading a brutal campaign that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in decades of civil war, many Western nations have turned against Assad’s request. They were reluctant to lift the sanctions.
Also on Tuesday, a Saudi plane carrying 35 tons of food, medical aid and shelter landed at Aleppo International Airport, marking the first delivery of aid from the kingdom to government-held territory since the February 6 earthquake. It will be a transport, Syrian state media reported. .
Two more aid planes are expected to arrive in Syria on Wednesday and Thursday, said Faleh al-Subei, head of the aid department at the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.
Meanwhile, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay has denied reports of food and aid shortages. “There is no problem feeding the public,” and “millions of blankets are being sent to all areas,” he said on live TV.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said more than 9,200 foreign personnel have taken part in the country’s search and rescue operations, with 100 countries offering assistance so far.
On Monday, UN aid chief Griffiths said during a visit to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo that the rescue phase of the response was “coming to an end”.
“And now at the humanitarian stage, the urgency of providing shelter, psychosocial care, food, schooling and a sense of the future for these people is our duty now,” he said. I was.
After announcing the end of its search and rescue operations last week, the “White Helmets” group, formally known as Syrian Civil Defense, declared a seven-day period of mourning in rebel-controlled areas in the north of the country on Monday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has stressed the need to “focus on trauma rehabilitation” when treating people affected by devastating disasters.
WHO’s representative in Turkey, Batyr Berdyklychev, highlighted the “growing problem” of “traumatized people” and predicted the need for psychological and mental health services in the affected areas.
“People are just beginning to understand what happened to them after this shocking period,” Berdyklichev said Tuesday at a press conference in the Turkish city of Adana.
WHO is negotiating with Turkish authorities to ensure that earthquake survivors have access to mental health services, Berdyklychev added, adding that many people displaced by the earthquake to other parts of Turkey also ” We need to get in touch,” he said.
Hans Kluge, WHO’s Regional Director for Europe, said in a briefing that the “immediate priorities” of the 22 emergency medical teams deployed by WHO to Turkey were “especially dealing with high numbers of trauma patients and devastating injuries. I am working for it,” he said.
Correction: This article has been updated to reveal the location in Adiyaman city where the 18-year-old boy and man were rescued.