Asia
China's Xi expresses support for Iran amid Western pressure
Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressed support for Iran during a visit Tuesday by its president as Tehran tries to expand relations with Beijing and Moscow to offset Western sanctions over its nuclear development.
The official Chinese account of Xi’s meeting with Ebrahim Raisi gave no indication whether they discussed Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Tehran supplied military drones to Russian President Vladimir Putin's government but says they were delivered before the war began.
Xi expressed support for Raisi’s government in language Beijing uses to criticize Washington’s domination of global affairs. China and Iran portray themselves, alongside Moscow, as counterweights to American power.
“China supports Iran in safeguarding national sovereignty” and “resisting unilateralism and bullying,” Xi said in a statement carried by Chinese state TV on its website.
Xi and Raisi attended the signing of 20 cooperation agreements including trade and tourism, the Chinese government announced. Those add to a 25-year strategy agreement signed in 2021 to cooperate in developing oil, industry and other fields.
China is one of the biggest buyers of Iranian oil and a source of investment.
Iran has struggled for years under trade and financial sanctions imposed by Washington and other Western governments over what they say is Tehran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, an accusation the Iranian government denies. The United States government cut off Iran’s access to the network that connects global banks in 2018.
Read more: US renews warning it’ll defend Philippines after China spat
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price urged China to influence Iran and lower potential threats in the region, saying that “would be in both of our interests.”
“The PRC has a role to play in very clearly signaling to Iran that its destabilizing activities — that its brinksmanship — is not going to be rewarded, it’s not going to be countenanced. It is not something that the international community is prepared to sit idly by and watch,” Price said Tuesday to reporters in Washington, referring to China by its official name, the People’s Republic of China.
Xi said Beijing “opposes external forces interfering in Iran’s internal affairs and undermining Iran’s security and stability,” according to the government statement. It said Xi promised to “work together on issues involving each other’s core interests,” but gave no details.
Raisi’s government didn’t immediately release details of the meeting, but the president called the two governments “friends in difficult situations” in a commentary published Monday by the ruling Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, asked whether Beijing was concerned that getting closer to Iran might complicate U.S.-Chinese ties, said their “friend relations” contribute to “promotion of peace and stability in the Middle East.”
“Our relations do not target any third parties,” said the spokesperson, Wang Wenbin.
Taiwan threatens to shoot down any Chinese balloons
Amid speculation over alleged Chinese spy balloons, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it would shoot down any suspected military object coming close to its shores from mainland China.
Maj. Gen. Huang Wen-chi, the assistant deputy chief of general staff for intelligence, told reporters that the self-governing island was on guard for any incursions, but had yet to find any that had penetrated its defenses.
Balloons found so far around Taiwan were used for meteorological exploration, he said. They were relatively small and light and would burst after rising to an altitude that could be threatening. Taiwan has yet to find targets requiring a lethal response, he said.
"We haven’t seen such sophisticated spy balloons sent by the Chinese Communist Party in the waters near Taiwan,” Huang said, referring to the balloon shot down by the U.S. earlier this month after traveling for days from above Alaska to South Carolina.
China, which claims Taiwan as its territory to be reunited by force if necessary, regularly sends fighter jets and other military assets into Taiwan's airspace and sea lanes.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called the U.S. downing of the Chinese balloon a “clear overreaction." Beijing says it was an unmanned airship made for meteorological research that had been blown off course.
The U.S. military had engaged an “absurd and costly large-scale political performance art show. We also advise the U.S. side to be careful about overexerting itself and spraining its back," Wang said at a daily news briefing.
The White House defended the shootdowns of three unidentified objects in as many days even as it acknowledged that officials had no indication the objects were intended for surveillance in the same manner as the high-altitude Chinese balloon.
Amid quake’s devastation, parallel rescue bid targets pets
Six days after the earthquake that flattened parts of Turkey and Syria, two survivors emerged from the rubble. They were dogs, the focus of a parallel rescue effort underway.
“One of the dogs clung to its owner’s corpse, and it was absolutely a miracle that it was rescued six days later,” said Csenay Tekinbas, a representative of the local HAYTAP animal welfare group.
“I hope it holds on to life,” Tekinbas said of the dog that finally left its dead owner. “I hope we can give it a new life.”
Already, field hospitals have been set up in four cities to care for rescued pets.
Read More: Rescuers find more alive in Turkey on 8th day after quake
Survival is just the first step. Those hurrying to find and care for pets also struggle to give them proper care. “There is no food, bird food, chicken feed or anything in any pet shop at the moment. Because everywhere is either closed or collapsed,” Tekinbas said.
Large bags of pet food are stacked at a relief station in one Antakya square, their crisp images of green lawns and happily panting pets contrasting with the grim surroundings. Nearby, a burly dog nibbles at a bowl.
The outreach to save pets goes as far as pounding down doors. After being alerted to a dog apparently left alone on the fourth floor of a building, HAYTAP workers put on hard hats and broke into the apartment to rescue a large, fluffy German shepherd.
As the dog slurped noisily at a metal bowl of water downstairs in a crumbling alley, the workers lavished affection on it.
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Robert Bandendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.
For Syrian women, quake adds disaster on top of war’s pain
Draped in a heavy wool shawl against the cold, Ayesha dragged her feet, her toddler granddaughter trailing behind her, as they made the 15-minute walk from her tent to the nearest bathroom in a nearby building, the only place they have to wash.
Seven days after the earthquake leveled their home in the northwest Syrian town of Atareb, the 43-year-old still has no access to water, electricity or heat for her and 12 family members, all crammed into a single tent.
“When I look at our house, I wonder how did anyone come out alive?” Ayesha said. “Maybe it would have been better if I died,” she added. “I came from under that rubble carrying the rubble of the whole world on my shoulders.”
She doesn’t know how much more she and other Syrians can take. Women in particular have shouldered the responsibility of keeping shattered families together during the past 12 years of civil war. The conflict and economic collapse left millions of people dependent on international aid. Now added to the litany of hardships is destruction from the earthquake, which killed tens of thousands and left millions homeless in southern Turkey and northern Syria.
Also Read: Newborn saved from rubble in quake-hit Syria in good health
With hospitals swamped by quake victims, Ayesha can’t get medical services to treat and monitor her liver disease. She and her husband both lost their sources of income in the quake. His taxi was crushed, and her stock of clothes that she once sold to neighbors was destroyed.
They have nothing to provide for their six children and their five grandchildren, including two she took in after one of her sons was killed in the war. They have to share mattresses to sleep in their tent.
“If hardships are a sign of the love of God, it means God really loves the Syrian people,” Ayesha said, breaking out in tears. Like most women in this conservative community, she spoke on condition her last name be withheld.
Also Read: After quake, war-hit Syrians struggle to get aid, rebuild
Their tent is in a camp for quake victims in Atareb, part of the last opposition-held territory in northwest Syria, which has seen bombardment and fighting for years. Walking between rows of destroyed homes in the town, it is hard to distinguish which collapsed from the quake and which from intense military operations at the height of fighting.
Syria’s war has loaded a particular burden and isolation on women, with so many men who were killed, detained, maimed or forced out of the country. The number of female-headed households across Syria increased by around 80% to comprise more than a fifth of households in 2020, according to the U.N.
Even before the quake, over 7 million women and girls across Syria needed critical health services and support against physical and sexual violence. Child marriage was on the rise, and hundreds of thousands of girls were out of school.
The immediate impact of the earthquake put at least 350,000 pregnancies in Syria and Turkey at risk, according to U.N. figures.
Women in the opposition-held northwest are especially vulnerable. Most of the territory’s population of 4 million fled there after being displaced from other parts of Syria. Health care was already stretched thin and dependent on foreign aid. Now non-emergency medical services have been suspended to deal with the earthquake.
“We can treat the women after trauma or after delivery, but they need to go back to a safe environment with minimum housing, nutrition and clean water. Unfortunately, this is in general lacking in northwest,” said Basel Termanini, chairman of the Syrian American Medical Society which has dozens of facilities in the northwest.
Throughout the war, Ayesha and her family repeatedly fled from their home in Atareb during times of bombardment to safer areas, where they would stay for months until they could return. One of her sons was killed in 2019, and she’s been taking care of his two young children since.
But, she said, “in 12 years of war, we never tasted terror and pain like that night” of the earthquake.
When the quake hit before dawn on Feb. 6, Ayesha and her family managed to get out of her building as part of it collapsed. They stood in the cold, pouring rain, looking at the destruction in disbelief.
The building next door was completely flattened, killing many of those inside -- including a woman who had just given birth, the baby, her seven other kids and her mother, who had arrived just hours earlier to help with the newborn.
The building’s dead now lie in a mass grave on the far end of a neighboring piece of farmland. The owner of the plot donated the land because cemeteries have filled up with quake victims.
Things were already hard before the earthquake. In the opposition-held territory, 90% of the population is dependent on humanitarian assistance.
There has been no work for the men, and many of the men were handicapped in the war, she said. Some women find jobs in community service and with aid groups. Others do household crafts like making soap or sewing clothes. There are hundreds of female civil defense volunteers, many of whom participated for the first time in the rescue and search missions.
But in the largely conservative community, dominated by a group once affiliated with al-Qaida, jobs for women are not easy to come by.
Halima, a 30-year-old mother of two children, lost her husband in the early days of the war. For years, she has moved between shelters for the displaced in the northwest in search of more generous donated food baskets. The quake caused cracks in the place where she’s currently staying and she’s afraid to stay there but has nowhere else to go.
“I pray for God’s grace. Maybe someone can take care of my children,” she said Sunday as she picked donated clothes at a Turkish Red Crescent warehouse.
International aid has only trickled in for quake victims in the northwest, increasing anger at the United Nations.
The sentiment has been building for some time. Humanitarian aid to Syria, locked in one of the world’s most complex crises for years, has been among the best funded by donors. But the gap between funding and need has grown, and U.N. appeals for emergency responses have gone more than 50% unanswered. In 2021, the health sector in northwest Syria was 60% underfunded, with only $6.4 million of $23.3 million covered.
When the earthquake hit, hospitals were not only damaged by the tremors but also overwhelmed by the injured and casualties, with supplies of essential emergency kits running out. Maternity hospitals were flooded with early deliveries and complications in pregnancies.
“Mothers are still living in the streets,” said Ikram Haboush, director of the maternity hospital in Atareb. “We don’t have enough incubators for early deliveries. The situation is far from stable.”
Over the years of conflict, Syrian women have exhausted their coping strategies. A natural disaster is the last thing they were prepared for.
“We are tired,” said Ayesha.
“For 12 years, we didn’t sleep a night from fear of bombings, from air strikes, or from displacement. Now we have eternal displacement,” she said. “We are living the tragedy of all tragedies.”
Rescuers find more alive in Turkey on 8th day after quake
Rescuers on Tuesday were working to reach people under the rubble in three provinces hit hard by the devastating quakes that hit Turkey and Syria last week.
The death toll from the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes that struck nine hours apart on Feb. 6 in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria passed 35,000, and was certain to increase as search teams find more bodies.
Turkish television continued broadcasting rescues Tuesday, as experts said the window to find survivors is closing.
In Adiyaman province, rescuers reached 18-year-old Muhammed Cafer Cetin, and medics gave him an IV with fluids before attempting a dangerous extraction from a building that crumbled further as rescuers were working. Medics surrounded him to place a neck brace and he was on a stretcher with an oxygen mask, making it out to daylight on the 199th hour. “We are so happy,” his uncle said.
Read More: Search for earthquake survivors enters final hours in Turkey
Two others were rescued from one building that’s been destroyed in central Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter, Tuesday some 198 hours after the quake. Broadcaster Haberturk said one was 17-year-old Muhammed Enes, who was seen wrapped in a thermal blanket and carried on a stretcher to an ambulance. Dozens of rescuers were working at the site and Turkish soldiers hugged and clapped after their rescue.
Rescuers then asked for quiet to continue looking for others and shouted “can anyone hear me?"
The health conditions of the rescued were unclear.
In extremely hard-hit Hatay, Sengul Abalioglu lost her old sister and four nephews. “It doesn't matter if dead or alive, we just want our corpses so that they at least have a grave and we bury them,” she told The Associated Press, devastated as she waited in front of the rubble where her family could be.
In Syria, President Bashar Assad agreed to open two new crossing points from Turkey to the country’s rebel-held northwest to deliver desperately needed aid and equipment to millions of earthquake victims, the United Nations announced Monday. The crossings at Bab Al-Salam and Al Raée will be opened for an initial period of three months. Until now, the U.N. has only been allowed to deliver aid to the Idlib area through a single crossing at Bab Al-Hawa.
The United Nations has been under intense pressure to get more aid and heavy equipment into Syria’s rebel-held northwest since the earthquake struck a week ago, with survivors lacking the means to dig for other survivors and the death toll mounting.
The first Saudi aid plane, carrying 35 tons of food, landed in government-held Aleppo airport Tuesday morning, according to Syrian state media. Saudi Arabia has raised some $50 million dollars in a public campaign to aid Turkey and Syria. Prior to Tuesday, Saudi planes landed in Turkey, with Saudi trucks also delivering some aid into impoverished rebel-held northwestern Syria.
Several other Arab countries have sent planes loaded with aid to government-held Syria, including Jordan and Egypt, the United Arab Emirates. Algeria, Iraq, Oman, Tunisia, Sudan and Libya have also delivered aid to Damascus.
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said late Monday rescue work continued in Hatay province, along with Kahramanmaras — the epicenter — and Adiyaman. Rescue work appears to have ended in the remaining seven provinces.
The quake affected 10 provinces in Turkey that are home to some 13.5 million people, as well as a large area in northwest Syria that is home to millions.
Quake survivors also face difficult conditions amid wrecked cities, with many sleeping outdoors in freezing weather. Much of the region's water system is not working, and damage to the system raises risks of contamination. Turkey’s health minister said samples taken from dozens of points of the water system were “microbiologically unfit,” which highlights how precarious basic needs continue to be.
More than 41,500 buildings were destroyed or so damaged that they would have to be demolished, the Minister of Environment and Urbanization. There are bodies under those buildings and the number of missing remain unclear.
Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities continued targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed. Turkey has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced.
The death toll in Turkey stood at 31,643 as of Monday. Officials have decreased the frequency of death toll updates since the first week of the response, now releasing larger updates once or twice a day.
The toll in the northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets, while 1,414 people have died in government-held areas, according to the Syrian Health Ministry in Damascus. The overall death toll in Syria stands at 3,580.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cabinet was scheduled to meet Tuesday.
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Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Kareem Chehayeb contributed from Beirut and Edith M. Lederer contributed from New York.
Tax officials search BBC's Delhi offices weeks after Modi documentary
Officials from India’s Income Tax department began conducting searches Tuesday (February 14, 2023) at the BBC’s offices in the capital, New Delhi, three of the broadcaster’s staff members told the Associated Press.
The search comes weeks after the British broadcaster released a controversial documentary that examined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots.
Teams from the tax department surveyed the BBC's Delhi and Mumbai offices, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, quoting officials who were not identified.
Also Read: BBC film on India's PM Modi, 2002 riots draws government ire
India banned the two-part documentary “India: The Modi Question” last month and authorities scrambled to halt screenings of the program and restrict clips of it on social media in a move that critics and political opponents decried as an assault on press freedom.
India’s Foreign Ministry called the documentary a “propaganda piece designed to push a particularly discredited narrative” that lacked objectivity.”
The BBC in a statement had said the documentary was “rigorously researched” and involved a wide range of voices and opinions.
Read More: Sexual harassment, misconduct went on unchecked at Al Jazeera, staff allege: BBC investigation
“We offered the Indian Government a right to reply to the matters raised in the series — it declined to respond,” the statement said.
Pakistan set for tax hikes in return for massive IMF bailout
Cash-strapped Pakistan will impose new taxes of 170 billion rupees this month in a bid for massive bailout, officials and analysts said Monday, even as they warned the new taxes could accelerate the country's spiraling inflation.
The dire outlook from economists and political analysts comes after the International Monetary Fund delayed the release of a crucial $1.1 billion portion of a 2019 deal worth $6 billion, on hold since December over Pakistan's failure to meet the terms. The latest round of the talks between Pakistan and the IMF concluded Friday with the fund recommending steps including imposing new taxes.
“The imposition of more taxes means tough days are ahead for the majority of the people in Pakistan who are already facing higher food and energy costs, but there is no other way out if Pakistan needs the IMF loans, and Pakistan desperately needs it," said Ehtisham-ul-Haq, a veteran economist.
The stalemate in talks between IMF and Pakistan was seen as a blow to the government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, who is struggling to avoid a default amid a worsening economic crisis and a surge in militant violence. Pakistan already is struggling with the recovery from record-breaking floods, which killed 1,739 people in summer 2022 and destroyed 2 million homes.
In January, dozens of countries and international institutions at a U.N.-backed conference in Geneva pledged more than $9 billion to help Pakistan recover and rebuild from devastating summer floods, but economists and Pakistani officials say those funds will be given for the projects, and not in cash.
Also Read: Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto in Moscow on official visit
Since then, Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has said that his experts were preparing to impose additional taxes and slash subsidies on electricity, gas and more to meet the deal’s terms.
Haq, the economist, said Pakistan's inflation rate of 26% will jump to 40% after the imposition of new taxes. But, he said in an interview, “life will become more difficult for the common man if Pakistan fails to revive the IMF bailout without any further delay."
Officials say several friendly countries like China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had assured Sharif's government that they will financially help Islamabad — but they too wanted Pakistan to complete the 2019 IMF program.
Imtiaz Gul, a senior Pakistani political analyst, said Sharif's government is likely to raise taxes on those who are already paying taxes.
“There is a need to broaden the tax base," he said, but raising taxes "will trigger an increase in the prices of all essential items."
The government insists that it will impose new taxes in such a way that poor people are not affected. The new taxes will be imposed on those who can afford to pay additional taxes to save the economy, the government said.
Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves have fallen to slightly over $2 billion. That’s enough only to pay for imports for 10 days. Officials say Pakistan's talks with IMF will resume virtually later Monday or Tuesday. Sharif last week warned that Pakistan would have difficulty complying with the IMF’s conditions.
Sharif's predecessor, Imran Khan — now the opposition leader since his ouster through April's no-confidence in Parliament — has been warning that Pakistan could face a Sri Lanka-like situation because of the deepening economic crisis. He has publicly warned that Pakistan could be blackmailed by the world community over the country's nuclear program if Pakistan defaults in the near future.
Khan insists his government was ousted under a U.S. plot, a charge Washington denies.
As survival window closes, more rescued in quake in Turkey
Rescue crews on Monday pulled a 40-year-old woman from the wreckage of a building a week after two powerful earthquakes struck, but reports of rescues are coming less often as the time since the quake reaches the limits of the human body's ability to survive without water, especially in sub-freezing temperatures.
The magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6. They killed at least 33,185, with the toll expected to rise considerably as search teams find more bodies, and reduced much of towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and twisted metal.
On Monday rescuers pulled a 40-year-old woman from the wreckage of a 5-story building in the town of Islahiye, in Gaziantep province. The woman, Sibel Kaya, was rescued after spending 170 hours beneath the rubble by a mixed crew that included members of Turkey’s coalmine rescue team.
Also REad:After quake, war-hit Syrians struggle to get aid, rebuild
Earlier, a 60-year-woman, Erengul Onder, was also pulled out from the rubble in the town of Besni, in Adiyaman province, by teams from the western city of Manisa.
“We received the news of a miracle from Besni which helped put the fire raging in our hearts a little,” wrote Manisa’s mayor Cengiz Ergun on Twitter.
Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico said the likelihood of finding people alive was “very, very small now.”
The lead author on a 2017 study involving deaths inside buildings struck by earthquakes, Reinoso said that the odds of survival for people trapped in wreckage fall dramatically after five days, and is near zero after nine days, although there have been exceptions.
David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed, saying the window for pulling people alive from the rubble is “almost at an end.”
But, he said, the odds were not very good to begin with. Many of the buildings were so poorly constructed that they collapsed into very small pieces, leaving very few spaces large enough for people to survive in, Alexander said.
“If a frame building of some kind goes over, generally speaking we do find open spaces in a heap of rubble where we can tunnel in,“ Alexander said. “Looking at some of these photographs from Turkey and from Syria, there just aren’t the spaces.”
Wintery conditions further reduce the window for survival. Temperatures in the region have fallen to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight.
“The typical way the body compensates for hypothermia is shivering — and shivering requires a lot of calories,” said Dr. Stephanie Lareau, a professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech. “So if somebody’s deprived of food for a number of days and exposed to cold temperatures, they’re probably going to succumb to hypothermia more rapidly.”
A week after the quakes hit, many people were still without shelter in the streets. Some survivors were still waiting in front of collapsed buildings waiting for the bodies of their loved ones to be retrieved.
Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed.
At least 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes, officials said.
Turkey has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced.
In Syria, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said that the international community has failed to provide aid.
Visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, Griffiths said Syrians are “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said, adding, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
The earthquake death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, although the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days. Turkey’s death toll was 29,605 as of Sunday.
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization warned that the pain will ripple forward, calling the disaster an “unfolding tragedy that’s affecting millions.”
“The compounding crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic decline, and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey, and El Deeb from Adana, Turkey. Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia contributed.
After quake, war-hit Syrians struggle to get aid, rebuild
After years of war, residents of areas in northwest Syria struck by a massive earthquake are grappling with their new and worsening reality.
Almost one week after the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck northern Syria and neighboring Turkey, the United Nations has acknowledged an international failure to help Syrian quake victims.
In Atareb, a town that Syrian rebels still hold after years of fighting government troops, survivors dug through the debris of their homes Sunday, picking up the remnants of their shattered lives and looking for ways to heal after the latest in a series of humanitarian disasters to hit the war-battered area.
Excavators lifted rubble and residents with shovels and picks destroyed columns to even out a demolished building.
Dozens of newly displaced families gathered for hot meals from local volunteers and the local opposition-run government. A private citizen went tent to tent to give out wads of cash in a makeshift shelter — the equivalent of about $18 to each family.
Syrians were doing what they have honed over years of crises: relying on themselves to pick up the pieces and move on.
“We are licking our own wounds,” said Hekmat Hamoud, who had been displaced twice by Syria’s ongoing conflict before finding himself trapped for hours beneath rubble.
Syria's northwestern rebel-held enclave, where over 4 million people for years have struggled to cope with ruthless airstrikes and rampant poverty, was hit hard by the Feb. 6 quake.
Many in the area were already displaced from the ongoing conflict and live in crowded tent settlements or buildings weakened by past bombings. The quake killed over 2,000 people in the enclave, and displaced many more for a second time, forcing some to sleep under olive groves in the frigid winter weather.
“l lost everything,” said father of two Fares Ahmed Abdo, 25, who survived the quake. But his new home and body shop where he fixed motorcycles for a living were destroyed. Once again with barely any shelter and no power nor toilets, he, his wife, two boys and ill mother are crammed in a small tent.
“I am waiting for any help," he said.
Visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths acknowledged in a statement that Syrians have been left “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”
“We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said. “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
Northwest Syria relies almost entirely on aid for survival, but post-quake international assistance has been slow to reach the area. The first U.N. convoy to reach the area from Turkey was on Thursday — three days after the earthquake.
Before that, the only cargo coming across the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Turkey-Syria border was a steady stream of bodies of earthquake victims coming home for burial — Syrian refugees who had fled the war in their country and settled in Turkey but perished in the quake.
The U.N. aid sent from Turkey to Syria is only authorized to enter via the Bab al-Hawa crossing, and logistics were complicated by pressure on the roads, many of them destroyed by the quake. While technically, international aid can also be sent from Syrian government-held areas to rebel-held areas in the northwest, that route brings its own set of hurdles and was at best a trickle.
Critics of the government of President Bashar Assad say aid funneled through government-held areas in Syria faces bureaucracy and the risk that authorities will misappropriate or divert the aid to support people close to the government.
A convoy carrying U.N. aid that was scheduled to cross Sunday into rebel-held Idlib from the government area was canceled after its entry was blocked by the the Qaida-affiliated rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which dominates the area. An administrative arm of the group said in a statement declined to receive assistance from government areas.
Strips of northern Syria are held by a patchwork of sometimes-conflicting groups, further hindering aid deliveries. Turkish-backed rebels have blocked aid convoys from reaching earthquake victims that were sent by rival U.S.-backed Kurdish groups in neighboring areas.
“We are trying to tell everyone, put politics aside. This is the time to unite behind the common effort to support the Syrian people," said Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy for Syria who landed in Damascus on Sunday.
At the United Nations, U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for an urgent U.S. Security Council vote to authorize the opening of additional cross-border passages into northwestern Syria." People in the affected areas are counting on us," she said in a statement. “They are appealing to our common humanity to help in their moment of need. We cannot let them down.”
While aid has been slow to reach the northwest, a number of countries that had cut ties with Damascus during Syria's civil war have sent help to government areas. Arab countries including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have stepped in. UAE's foreign minister visited Damascus and met with Assad on Sunday.
Raed al-Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, a civil defense group operating in the rebel-held northwest, said Griffiths' visit was “too little, too late.” He said calls for international assistance by local rescue teams went unheeded for days “and during this time, countless lives have been needlessly lost.”
Al-Saleh met with Griffiths to demand the opening of additional cross-border routes for aid to enter without waiting for authorization from the U.N. Security Council.
Abdel-Haseeb Abdel-Raheem sifted through the rubble of his aunt’s destroyed four-story building in the town of Atareb in opposition-run northern Aleppo. He had pulled the bodies of his aunt and her husband from beneath the rubble hours after the quake. Now he went back to find any valuables, using his hands and dipping his body inside the skeleton of the destroyed building to pull out blankets and pillows, as well as some clothes.
The 34-year-old said he had no illusion that humanitarian assistance will solve his problems.
“We have no hope anymore,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
Turkey probes contractors as earthquake deaths pass 33,000
Turkish authorities are targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed in the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes as rescuers found more survivors in the rubble Sunday, including a pregnant woman and two children, in the disaster that killed over 33,000 people.
The death toll from the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes that struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria rose to 33,185 and was certain to increase as search teams find more bodies.
As despair bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescues, the focus turned to assigning blame.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes. While the quakes were powerful, many in Turkey blame faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.
Turkey's construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.
Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of cutting down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. The justice ministry said three people were arrested, seven others were detained and another seven were barred from leaving Turkey.
Also Read: Turkey detains building contractors as quake deaths pass 33,000
Two contractors held responsible for the destruction of buildings in Adiyaman were arrested Sunday at Istanbul Airport while trying to leave the country, the private DHA news agency and other media reported. One detained contractor, Yavuz Karakus, told DHA: “My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules.”
Rescuers reported finding more survivors amid increasingly long odds. Thermal cameras were used as crews demanded silence to hear those trapped.
In hard-hit Hatay province, a 50-year-old woman who appeared badly injured was carried out by crews in the town of Iskenderun. Similar rescues in the province saved two other women, one of them pregnant, according to broadcasters TRT and HaberTurk.
HaberTurk showed a 6-year-old boy rescued from his wrecked home in Adiyaman. An exhausted rescuer removed his surgical mask and took deep breaths as several women cried in joy.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca posted a video of a young girl in a navy blue jumper who was found alive. “There is always hope!” he tweeted.
Rescuers in Antakya, elsewhere in Hatay province, pulled a man in his late 20s or 30s from the rubble, saying he was one of nine trapped in the building. He waved weakly as he was removed on a stretcher as workers applauded and chanted, “God is great!”
German and Turkish workers rescued an 88-year-old in Kirikhan, German news agency dpa reported. Italian and Turkish rescuers found a 35-year-old man in Antakya who appeared unscathed, private NTV television reported.
A child was freed overnight in the town of Nizip, in Gaziantep, state-run Anadolu Agency said, while a 32-year woman was found in a wrecked eight-story building in Antakya and asked for tea when she emerged, according to NTV.
Those were the rare exceptions.
Backhoes and bulldozers prepared a large cemetery in Antakya’s outskirts as trucks and ambulances brought a steady stream of black body bags. Hundreds of graves were marked with simple wooden planks.
Hatay’s airport reopened Sunday after its runway was repaired, and military and commercial planes ferried in supplies and will take away evacuees.
There are 34,717 Turkish personnel involved in rescue efforts. On Sunday, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said they were joined by 9,595 personnel from 74 countries, with more on the way.
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization warned that the pain will ripple forward, calling the disaster an “unfolding tragedy that’s affecting millions.”
“The compounding crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic decline, and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Tedros said WHO experts were waiting to enter northwestern Syria “where we have been told the impact is even worse.”
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, said Syrians are “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said, adding, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
In the town of Atareb, in opposition-run northern Aleppo province, Abdel-Haseeb Abdel-Raheem returned Sunday to his ruined four-story building to try to salvage any valuables but could find only blankets, pillows and some clothes. His aunt and her husband died there, but their three children survived.
With no international rescue efforts in the war-battered region, the 34-year-old had to recover the bodies himself.
“You can’t hear someone inside screaming and sit tight. You can’t sit still. You can’t have the heart to hear someone (crying for help) and you do nothing,” he said, sitting above a mound of debris.
Political disputes have held up aid convoys sent from areas of northeast Syria controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish groups to those controlled by the Syrian government and by Turkish-backed rebels who have fought with the Kurdish groups over the years.
A U.N. aid convoy sent to northwestern Syria through government-held areas was postponed due to obstruction from Hay’at Tahrir al Sham, an al-Qaida affiliated group ruling Idlib province, a U.N. spokesperson told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, U.N. aid convoys continue to cross from Turkey into northwestern Syria through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. The first U.N. convoy only reached northwest Syria from Turkey on Thursday, three days after the disaster struck.
Before that, it was only a steady stream of bodies coming through Bab al-Hawa: Syrian refugees who had fled the civil war and settled in Turkey but died in the disaster, being returned home for burial.
The earthquake death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, although the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days. Turkey’s death toll was 29,605 as of Sunday.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced the establishment of Earthquake Crimes Investigation bureaus to identify contractors and others responsible for building works. It would gather evidence; instruct experts including architects, geologists and engineers; and check building permits and occupation permits.
A contractor was detained Friday at Istanbul airport before he could leave the country. He built a luxury 12-story building called Ronesans Rezidans in Antakya, and when it fell, it killed an untold number. He was formally arrested Saturday.
In leaked testimony published by Anadolu, the man said the building followed regulations and he did not know why it didn't stay standing. His lawyer suggested his client was a scapegoat.
Under programs that allowed building owners to pay fines instead of bringing them up to code, the government agency responsible for enforcement acknowledged in 2019 that over half of all buildings in Turkey — accounting for some 13 million apartments— were not in compliance.
The detentions could help direct public anger toward builders and contractors, deflecting it from local and state officials who allowed apparently substandard construction to proceed. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, already burdened by an economic downturn and high inflation, faces parliamentary and presidential elections in May.
The nongovernmental business organization TURKONFED estimated the earthquake damage at $84.1 billion, based on statistics from the devastating 1999 quake in northwestern Turkey, including $70.1 billion in housing and $10.4 billion to gross domestic product.
Rescue crews have been overwhelmed by the widespread damage that has affected roads and airports, making it even harder to move quickly.
Erdogan acknowledged the initial response was hampered by the damage, with the worst-affected area 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter and home to 13.5 million. During a tour Saturday, Erdogan said such a tragedy was rare, referring to it as the “disaster of the century” in multiple speeches.
In New York City, mourners gathered Saturday at a mosque to remember a family of four from the borough of Queens who were killed while visiting relatives in Turkey. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Burak and Kimberly Firik and their sons, aged 1 and 2, died in the disaster.
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Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Abby Sewell in Beirut, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Sarah El Deeb in Atareb, Syria, contributed.