Turkish authorities seeks to maintain order across the disaster zone, starts legal action over some building collapses
\n ANTAKYA
\nRescuers pulled more survivors from rubble on Sunday, six days after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkiye and Syria, as Turkish authorities sought to maintain order across the disaster zone and started legal action over some building collapses.
\nWith chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries from Monday\u2019s earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 28,000 and looked set to keep growing. It was the deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939.
\nDisplaced residents in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre, said they had set up tents as close as they could to their damaged or destroyed homes in an effort to prevent them from being looted.
\nFacing questions over his response to the earthquake as he prepares for a national election that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, President Tayyip Erdogan promised to start rebuilding within weeks.
\nIn Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving many homeless for a second time after they were displaced by a decade-old civil war, though the region has received little aid compared to government-held areas.
\n\u201cWe have so far failed the people in north-west Syria,\u201d United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted from the Turkiye-Syria border, where only a single border crossing is open for UN aid supplies. \u201cThey rightly feel abandoned,\u201d Griffiths said, adding that he was focused on addressing that swiftly.
\nIn Turkiye\u2019s southeastern province of Hatay, a Romanian rescue team carried a 35-year-old man named Mustafa down a pile of debris from a building, broadcaster CNN Turk said, about 149 hours after he was buried by the quake.
\n\u201cHis health is good, he was talking,\u201d said one of the rescuers. \u201cHe was saying, \u2018Get me out of here quickly, I\u2019ve got claustrophobia\u2019.\u201d
\nSecurity fears and detention orders
\nTwo German rescue organisations suspended work in Turkiye on Saturday, citing reports of clashes between groups of people and highlighting concerns for security in the quake-hit areas.
\nGizem, a rescue worker from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, said she had seen looters in the city of Antakya. \u201cWe cannot intervene much, as most of the looters carry knives.\u201d
\nOne elderly resident of Kahramanmaras said that gold jewellery in his home had been stolen, while in the port city of Iskenderun police had deployed at junctions of commercial streets with many phone and jewelry shops.
\nErdogan has warned that looters will be severely punished. Building quality in a country which lies on several seismic fault lines has come into sharp focus in the aftermath of the quake.
\nVice President Fuat Oktay said that 131 suspects had so far been identified as responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of buildings flattened in the 10 affected provinces.
\n\u201cWe will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries,\u201d he said.
\nAlong the main road leading into the city of Antakya, where the few buildings left standing had large cracks or caved-in facades, traffic occasionally halted as rescue teams called for silence to detect signs of remaining life under the ruins.
\nSyria aid \u2018held up\u2019
\nIn Syria, the hostilites that have fractured the country during 12 years of civil war are now hindering relief work.
\nEarthquake aid from government-held regions into territory controlled by hardline opposition groups has been held up by approval issues with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which controls much of the region, a UN spokesperson said.
\nAn HTS source in Idlib told Reuters the group would not allow any shipments from government-held areas and that aid would be coming in from Turkiye to the north.
\n\u201cTurkiye has opened all the roads and we won\u2019t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping,\u201d the source said.
\nAn aid convoy from Syria\u2019s Kurdish-led northeastern region carrying fuel and other aid was also turned back on Thursday from the northwest, where Turkey-backed rebels reign.
\nThe European Union\u2019s envoy to Syria on Sunday urged authorities in Damascus to \u201cengage in good faith\u201d with aid workers. \u201cIt is important to allow unimpeded access for aid to arrive in all areas where it is needed,\u201d Dan Stoenescu said.
\nThe quake ranks as the world\u2019s seventh deadliest natural disaster this century, its toll approaching the 31,000 from a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.
\nIt has killed 24,617 inside Turkiye, and more than 3,500 in Syria, where tolls have not been updated since Friday.
\nTurkiye said about 80,000 people were in hospital, with more than 1 million in temporary shelters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkish authorities seeks to maintain order across the disaster zone, starts legal action over some building collapses ANTAKYA Rescuers pulled more survivors from rubble on Sunday, six days after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkiye and Syria, as Turkish authorities sought to maintain order across the disaster zone and started legal action over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-313336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n