Turkey-Syria earthquake: As it happened

The White House on Monday said that a convoy of 10 trucks has crossed into Syria to provide aid for earthquake victims.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the US is prepared to provide any and all assistance to earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, and further called on the UN Security Council to approve additional crossings into Syria.

"It's critical for the Security Council to authorise two additional crossings to deliver life-saving assistance. We cannot delay any longer," Jean-Pierre said.

The Security Council met behind closed doors on Monday to discuss the issue of border crossings into Syria.

On the 15-member Security Council, Brazil and Switzerland have taken the lead on negotiating any action related to the Syria humanitarian aid access issue. However, as of Sunday, diplomats said no draft resolution has yet been circulated to authorise more crossings.

A resolution would need nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the US, Britain or France to pass. Syrian ally Russia has said that the existing council mandate for a single border crossing was sufficient.

Around this time of year, the wheat crops in northern Syria are beginning to take shape, with farmers carefully tending to their yield ahead of the summer harvest.

But after a dam collapsed in northwest Syria following Monday's deadly earthquake, surging floodwater has wiped out thousands of acres of arable land making it impossible to salvage anything from this year's crop and raising fears over food security.

Residents in Idlib province's Al-Taloul village, which sits some 15km away from the Turkish border, told Middle East Eye that their prized wheat and bean fields were completely submerged after the nearby agricultural dam burst its banks.

Read more in this report by Hussam Hammoud and Yousef Gharaibi:

Syria earthquake: Flooding wipes out vital farmland after dam bursts its banks

The Turkish government is considering relocating hundreds of thousands of Syrians from 10 of the country's provinces after the twin earthquakes that have so far killed more than 30,000 people in Turkey, Middle East Eye's Istanbul correspondent Levent Kemal reported. 

The two massive earthquakes have not simply affected the lives of millions of people in northern Syria. They have caused tremendous destruction in a region where Syrians fleeing their country's civil war had found a new home: southern Turkey.  

Syrian sources have told Middle East Eye that the Syrian-Turkish Joint Committee, created in 2019 on behalf of the Turkish interior ministry and the opposition Syrian National Coalition, will soon call for Syrians to relocate to different cities. 

One of the sources, speaking anonymously, said the exact number of Syrian casualties in Turkey is not clear yet. They added that the highest number of casualties is expected in the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

“As you know, some neighbourhoods there have been called Syrian towns. These neighbourhoods have been destroyed completely,” the source said. 

A separate Turkish source with knowledge of the situation told MEE that 1,126 Syrian bodies were delivered to Syria through the border last week.

The source said he believes around one fourth of the dead in Hatay are Syrians. 

Turkey is the foreign country most impacted by the decade-long conflict in Syria. Over three and a half million Syrians are living in Turkey under temporary protection.

In some border towns, Syrians have become the majority. According to the Turkey-based Association for Refugees, 1.75 million Syrians have been living in the 10 earthquake-hit provinces according to the December 2022 statistics. 

Read more here:

Turkey earthquake: Ankara may call for relocation of Syrian refugees from disaster zone

It's been described as a "miracle" after a 13-year-old boy named Kaan has been found more than 182 hours under the rubble in Hatay, one of the worst-hit regions following last week's earthquake

Images on Turkish television show the boy being taken by aid workers to an an ambulance amid cheers and celebratory shouts.

The teenager held a rescuer's hand as he was placed on a stretcher, head braced, and covered for warmth, before he was moved into an ambulance. 

With hopes of finding many more survivors in the rubble fading fast, the combined death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria from last Monday's 7.8 magnitude quake rose above 35,000 and looked set to keep increasing.

Turkey's national carrier, Turkish Airlines, said that flights are now again operational from Hatay Airport, which was one of the worst affected regions of last week's earthquake. 

In a tweet, the carrier said that it would take bookings for those trying to leave the region between 13-19 February for free via mobile app and website.

A controversial Israeli rabbi has sparked outrage after claiming the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday last week was "divine justice".

Shmuel Eliyahu, who serves as the chief Rabbi of Safed in northern Israel and is a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council, claimed that God was punishing countries affected by the disaster because of their alleged mistreatment of the Jewish people.

"God is judging all the nations around us who wanted to invade our land and throw us into the sea," Eliyahu wrote in an op-ed published in the Olam Katan newspaper on Friday.

Read more: 

Turkey-Syria earthquake: Controversial Israeli rabbi calls disaster 'divine justice'

Burhan Bektas left Istanbul on Tuesday, a day after two earthquakes struck the south of Turkey leaving the region devastated. 

The 30-year-old joined an army of volunteers that have made their way to the region, going of their own volition to help those most in need. 

Burhan spoke to Middle East Eye from Kahramanmaras, one of the worst affected areas. 

"I decided to go to Kahramanmaras because I thought I could be helpful to these people. Given the scale of devastation, I knew that there would be something for me to do here. I left the city alone and one of my friends joined me along the way.

"I didn't have a plan of what I would do or who I would meet.

"I know a lot of people living in these cities have lost a lot unfortunately. I have just talked to a friend at the weekend who found their dead nephew in the rubble. My family has not been impacted by the earthquake but many people I know have. 

"We arrived in Kahramanmaras on Tuesday. We made our way to the hospital the day after the earthquake.

"There were a lot of injured people, too many for the doctors to look after themselves. We were helping doctors to look after patients. On the second day, we left the hospital as further assistance came to the hospital. 

"We established a place where we could cook and a kitchen and this is where we have been for the last few days. 

"We are calling more people to come to the kitchen to help us; we are also fundraising. We are informing people who are living in Istanbul how they can help us through our Instagram stories. We intend to stay here as long as we can."

Good morning MEE readers. 

It’s been a week now since two earthquakes and several aftershocks devastated southeast Turkey and northwest Syria. 

As of this morning, the death toll has risen to above 35,000. At least 31,643 have died in Turkey, while over 3,581 died in Syria. 

Remarkably, there are still people being pulled from the rubble, seven days on.

Sibel Kaya, 40, was rescued from a collapsed building in Turkey’s Gaziantep on Monday after around 170 hours under the rubble, CNN Turk reported. 

Meanwhile in the Kahramanmaras province, rescuers have made contact with three survivors trapped under the rubble, believed to be a grandmother, mother and 30-day-old baby. 

A Turkish military team, miners and Spanish firefighters are digging a tunnel to attempt to reach them. 

The UN aid chief said on Monday that the rescue phase was coming to a close, with urgency now switching to providing shelter, food, schooling and psychological care. 

"What is the most striking here, is even in Aleppo, which has suffered so much these many years, this moment... was about the worst that these people have experienced," Martin Griffiths said during a visit to Aleppo in northern Syria. 

He added that aid would move from government-held parts of Syria to opposition-controlled northwest Syria, after President Bashar al-Assad announced that humanitarian assistance could cross the frontline. 

We have more updates to come throughout the day. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok for the latest news.

Hello MEE readers, 

It has been nearly a week since a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck parts of southern Turkey and Syria. The death toll has risen to more than 33,000 people, with the Turkish Afad disaster agency recording at least 29,605 deaths in Turkey. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamid al Thani on Sunday, hours after Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hosted his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias in southern Turkey. 

Erdogan also vowed to clamp down on looters in quake zones and said his government planned to prosecute contractors and builders who constructed buildings that collapsed in the earthquakes across southern Turkey. 

Meanwhile, emergency aid to parts of Syria has slowly begun to trickle in, with the UN's Martin Griffiths admitting to "failing" Syrians stranded in northwest Syria on Sunday during a visit to the Bab al Hawa crossing.

White Helmets chief Raed Saleh, whose teams of rescue workers have been working around the clock to find Syrians buried under rubble in northwest Syria, openly criticised Griffiths and the UN, describing its response as "shameful" and as "too little too late."

Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al Assad met with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed as World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus toured hospitals in Aleppo. 

Tens of thousands of rescue workers are still scouring through flattened neighbourhoods, despite freezing weather that has deepened the misery of millions now in desperate need of aid. The United Nations has warned that at least 870,000 people urgently need hot meals across Turkey and Syria. In Syria alone, up to 5.3 million people may have been made homeless.

MEE will be taking a pause in coverage. To stay updated, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok for the latest news.

The death toll from Monday's earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria has risen to 33,000 on Sunday, with the UN warning the death toll may double. 

The Turkish AFAD disaster agency said 29,605 people died and 3,574 from Syria, bringing the total to 33,179. 

The Turkish AFAD disaster authority said the death toll in Turkey from Monday's earthquakes had risen to 29,605. 

A UN spokesperson said earthquake aid from government-held parts of Syria into territory controlled by opposition is being held up by approval issues with the hardline group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. 

A spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian aid office told Reuters "there are issues with approval" by HTS without further information.

A UN spokesperson in Damascus declined to comment, saying the UN "continues to work with relevant parties to have access to the area".

An HTS source in Idlib told Reuters the group would not allow shipments from government-held parts of Syria and that aid would be coming from Turkey to the north.

"Turkey has opened all the roads and we won't allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping," the source said.

The head of the Syrian Civil Defence forces (White Helmets) criticised the UN's response to the earthquakes in Syria and said help to the area is "too little too late". 

Making his comments after UN aid chief Martin Griffiths visited the Bab al Hawa crossing, Raed Saleh, who heads the White Helmets, called on Griffiths to immediately re-open cross-border routes without waiting for UN Security Council authorisation.

"Since the moment the earthquake struck seven days ago, we have been appealing to the UN to send urgent assistance to aid our rescue operations in northwest Syria. For days these calls went unheeded, and during this time, countless lives have been needlessly lost," Saleh said in a statement. 

"This visit is too little, too late. The UN's failure to act quickly to save Syrians live in the face of a humanitarian crisis is utterly shameful and should be a stain on its conscience."

Syrian President Bashar al Assad on Sunday met UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed in the first such high-level visit by an Arab official since the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, official media reported.