More than 40,000 people died in deadly earthquakes that ‘hit’ Turkey and Syria, according to official figures that are made public.

ten days later deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria Rescue teams continued to dig under the rubble for survivors, while the anger of citizens against the Erdogan government, which they also blame for the tolerance shown to paper building contractors, is off the charts.

Turkey, Syria earthquake death toll tops 40,000: officials pic.twitter.com/cSXKkWSYjJ

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 16, 2023

Turkey is facing one of the world’s worst homelessness crises after deadly earthquakes devastated entire regions and claimed the lives of tens of thousands.

“We will continue our work until we pull out the last citizen left under the damaged buildings,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting held at the headquarters of the Agency for Disaster and Emergency Management (AFAD). ).

The Turkish President noted that an assessment of the condition of buildings, tens of thousands of which were destroyed, will be completed in a week, and reconstruction will begin in the coming months.

“We will restore all homes and workplaces that were destroyed or are no longer habitable as a result of the earthquake and hand them over to their rightful owners,” he added.

Teams of experts from the Ministry of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change were sent to the affected areas to assess the extent of damage to the remaining buildings. A building is considered uninhabitable if, for example, it has a crack more than three millimeters wide, or three smaller cracks, or a knocked-out core in reinforced concrete columns. Buildings deemed particularly dangerous are subject to “immediate demolition”.

More than 105,000 people were affected by the earthquake, more than 13,000 of them are in hospitals.

With information from APE-MPE and AFP