Today, fourteen days after the February 6 earthquake, Turkey has decided to suspend search and rescue operations in all areas except for the two most affected provinces, Kahramanmaras and Hatay.

“In a large number of provinces, search work has been stopped. They continue in the provinces of Kahramanmaras and Hatay, in about 40 buildings,” said Yunus Sezer, head of the Turkish disaster management agency Afad.

More than 40,500 people have died in Turkey

The 7.8 magnitude quake caused severe damage in the southern part of the country and Syria and claimed the lives of 40,689 people in Turkey, according to the latest official count released today by the Afad news agency.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Fuat Oktay said 105,000 buildings had collapsed or were badly damaged and would be demolished.

At the same time, many are now praying that the bodies of their loved ones will be found so that they can bury them.

“If I prayed to find a dead person? Yes (…) we must hand over his body to the family,” excavator operator Akin Bozkurt said as he cleared debris from a damaged building in the city of Kahramanmaras.

“When you pull a body out from under a ton of rubble, families wait with hope,” Bozkurt continued. “They want to have a funeral. They need a grave.”

According to Islamic tradition, the dead should be buried as soon as possible.

Neither Turkey nor Syria have announced how many people have gone missing since the earthquake.

Last attempts to bring back the survivors

In one of the latest attempts to pull survivors out of the rubble, 12 days after the deadly earthquake, rescue teams began manually clearing rubble at the site of rescue operations last Saturday night in Antioch.

According to rescuers, trained dogs and thermal imaging cameras found signs of life in two people, but shortly after midnight, eight hours after attempts to extract them began, rescuers stopped rescue efforts.

“No one is alive,” said AFAD member Mujdat Erdogan, his uniform and face covered in dust. “I don’t believe we can save people anymore.”

A group from Kyrgyzstan tried to rescue a Syrian family of five from the ruins of a building in Antioch, southern Turkey.

Yesterday, three people, including a child, were pulled alive from the ruins. According to rescuers, the mother and father survived, but the child later died of dehydration. His older sister and twin brother also did not survive.

Millions of people need help

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 26 million people in Turkey and Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The US Secretary of State is expected to visit Turkey today to discuss how Washington can further assist Ankara in its efforts to deal with the worst natural disaster in its modern history.

Investigations continue in Syria

In Syria, which has reported more than 5,800 deaths, the UN World Food Program (WFP) has announced that authorities in the country’s northwest are blocking access to the area.

“It complicates our work. This must be resolved immediately,” WFP Director David Beasley said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

Most of the casualties in Syria are in the northwest, an area controlled by rebels who are fighting forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Time is running out and our money is running out. It’s costing our business about $50 million a month just for our response to the earthquake, so if Europe doesn’t want another wave of refugees, we need the support we need,” Beasley said.

Thousands of Syrians who fled to Turkey to escape their country’s civil war have returned to their homes in the war zone – at least for now.

Source: APE-ME, REUTERS