ANTAKYA: Cold, hunger and despair gripped hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria on Thursday, while hopes faded of many more people being found alive amid the ruins of cities.

The 7.8-magnitude quake early on Monday has killed nearly 20,000 people in Turkiye and war-ravaged Syria, according to officials and medics in the two countries, flattening entire neighbourhoods.

That surpasses the more than 17,000 people killed in 1999 when a similarly powerful quake hit Turkiye’s more densely populated northwest.

A Turkish official said the disaster posed “very serious difficulties” for the holding of an election scheduled for May 14 in which President Tayyip Erdogan has been expected to face the toughest challenge in his two decades in power.

With anger simmering over the slow delivery of aid and delays in getting the rescue effort underway, it is bound to play into the vote should it still go ahead.

At a gas station near the Turkish town of Kemalpasa, people picked through cardboard boxes of donated clothes. In the port city of Iskenderun, journalists saw people huddled round campfires on roadsides and in wrecked garages and warehouses.

Authorities say some 6,500 buildings in Turkiye collapsed and countless more were damaged in the quake zone where some 13 million people live.

The confirmed death toll in Turkiye rose to 16,170 on Thursday, Mr Erdogan said.

Sleeping by the roadside

In Turkiye’s Maras, people camped inside a bank, taping a sheet in the window for privacy. Others had set up on the grass median of a main road, heating instant soup on fires and wrapping themselves in blankets.

In Antakya, few petrol stations had fuel and kilometres-long queues stretched from those that did.

Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east.

Barefoot and bruised

There were still some signs of hope. Turkish footage late on Wednesday showed a few more survivors being rescued, including Abdulalim Muaini, who was pulled from his collapsed home in Hatay, where he had remained since Monday next to his dead wife.

Rescue workers dug out a 60-year-old woman named Meral Nakir from the rubble of an apartment block in Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake struck, state broadcaster TRT showed in live coverage. Barefoot and her faced bruised, Nakir was wrapped in a blanket and carried to a waiting ambulance.

A two-year-old boy was picked out of the rubble by a Romanian and Polish rescue team in Hatay 79 hours after the quake, video released by Turkiye’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) on Thursday showed. The boy, wearing a striped sweater, cried as he was gently lifted from the hole where he had been trapped.

Many in Turkiye have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped — sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.

Further slowing the relief effort, the main road into Antakya was clogged with traffic as residents sought to leave the disaster zone and aid trucks headed in.

After facing criticism over the initial response, Mr Erdogan said on a visit to the area on Wednesday operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless.

Nevertheless, the disaster will pose an additional challenge to the long-ruling president in the election.

One official told that it was too early to make any decision on elections, noting that a three-month state of emergency had been announced and that some 15 per cent of Turkiye’s population lived in the affected area.

“We will look at developments but at the moment there are very serious difficulties in holding an election on May 14,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2023