UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths today urged the global community to remember the thousands of people in need of shelter and food as rescuers search for survivors of Monday’s earthquake in southern Turkey and northwest Syria.

Speaking at a press briefing in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province during rescue work, Griffiths said he was talking to families who were displaced and left in the cold without food after the earthquake.

“I am here to make sure these people are not forgotten,” he told reporters.

Griffiths praised Turkey’s response to the disaster as “extraordinary” and applauded the “courage of rescuers who are working around the clock, hoping to hear another sound, another survivor.”

“This is just the beginning, and my experience is that people are always disappointed at first,” he said, clearly referring to criticism of the authorities’ response to the earthquake.

According to him, what happened in the epicenter of the earthquake is “the worst event in the last 100 years in the region.”

Apparently he was referring to the worst natural disaster in the region: Monday’s earthquake was the strongest in Turkey since 1939.

Syria’s 11-year civil war, which left hundreds of thousands dead and millions homeless, remains the deadliest in the region’s recent history.

Griffiths said he is launching a three-month operation for both Turkey and Syria to help cover the costs of operations there.

He told Reuters he hoped aid in Syria would be spread across both government-held areas and opposition-held territory, but noted that at that level, things were “still not clear.”

Rescuers in opposition-controlled areas have criticized the United Nations and the international community for their lack of response after the earthquake.

Source: Reuters, APE-MPE.