Turkey-Syria earthquake: Rescue ops underway as officials still hear voices under rubble, toll passes 41,000
Terming the earthquakes as "the worst natural disaster" in the region in a century, the WHO's Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge emphasised the importance of all parties cooperating on aid delivery.
FollowRescue officials in southern Turkey said that they were still hearing voices from under the rubble after the country witnessed a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, offering a glimmer of hope of finding more survivors.
While the rescue operations are underway in a bid to find more survivors, the quake has already claimed the lives of over 41,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
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The rescuers attempted to save three sisters from under the rubble in Turkey's Kahramanmaras region while a 35-year-old woman was saved in the same region who was believed to have been stuck under the debris for around 205 hours.
Two brothers, 17-year-old Muhammad Enis Yeninar and 21-year-old brother Abdulbaki Yennir, were also rescued from the collapsed building in Kahramanmaras on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged governments and civil society to work together to ensure cross-border delivery of humanitarian aid between Turkey and Syria and within Syria.
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Terming the earthquakes as "the worst natural disaster" in the region in a century, the WHO's Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge emphasised the importance of all parties cooperating on aid delivery.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Kluge said, "The needs are huge, increasing by the hour. Some 26 million people across both countries need humanitarian assistance."
With the opening of two more border crossing points in Syria after the announcement by Bashar al-Assad, UN workers were racing to funnel aid to survivors in the war-ravaged country hit by the devastating quake.
On Tuesday, as many as eleven trucks with UN aid crossed into northwest Syria via the Bab Al-Salam passage, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted, adding that 26 more trucks passed into the region via the Bab Al-Hawa crossing.
