Turkish officials have detained or issued arrest warrants for more than 130 people allegedly involved in shoddy and illegal construction methods, as rescuers continue to pull survivors from the rubble, six days after a pair of earthquakes collapsed thousands of buildings.
Key points:
- The death toll from Monday's quakes that hit south-eastern Türkiye and northern Syria stands at 33,179, with 92,600-plus injured
- Türkiye says warrants have been issued for the arrests of 134 people in relation to collapsed buildings
- Survivors continue to be rescued from under rubble six days after the quake, including a 6-year-old boy and 88-year-old woman
The death toll from Monday's quakes that hit south-eastern Türkiye and northern Syria stood at 33,179 — with another 92,600-plus injured — as of Sunday morning and was certain to rise as bodies continued to be uncovered.
As despair also bred rage at the agonisingly slow rescue efforts, the focus turned to who was to blame for not better preparing people in the earthquake-prone region that includes an area of Syria that was already suffering from years of civil war.
Even though Türkiye has, on paper, construction codes that meet current earthquake-engineering standards, they are too rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings slumped onto their side or pancaked downward onto residents.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said Sunday that 134 people were being investigated for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency.
He said that three had been arrested pending trial, seven people were detained and seven other were barred from leaving the country.
Contractors attempt to flee country
The quakes were powerful, but victims, experts and people across Türkiye are blaming bad construction for multiplying the devastation.
Authorities at Istanbul Airport on Sunday detained two contractors held responsible for the destruction of several buildings in Adiyaman, the private DHA news agency and other media reported. The pair were reportedly on their way to Georgia.
One of the arrested contractors, Yavuz Karakus, told reporters on Sunday: "My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules," the DHA news agency reported.
Two more people were arrested in the province of Gaziantep suspected of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
'Earthquake crimes investigation' bureaus to be set up
A day earlier, Türkiye's Justice Ministry announced the planned establishment of "Earthquake Crimes Investigation" bureaus.
The bureaus would aim to identify contractors and others responsible for building works, gather evidence, instruct experts including architects, geologists and engineers, and check building permits and occupation permits.
A building contractor was detained by authorities on Friday at Istanbul airport before he could board a flight out of the country.
He was the contractor of a luxury 12-story building in the historic city of Antakya, in Hatay province, the collapse of which left an untold number of dead.
The detentions could help direct public anger toward builders and contractors, deflecting attention away from local and state officials who allowed the apparently sub-standard constructions to go ahead.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, already burdened by an economic downturn and high inflation, faces parliamentary and presidential elections in May.
Survivors, many of whom lost loved ones, have turned their frustration and anger at authorities.
Rescue crews have been overwhelmed by the widespread damage which has impacted roads and airports, making it even more difficult to race against the clock.
Mr Erdogan acknowledged earlier in the week that the initial response has been hampered by the extensive damage. He said the worst-affected area was 500 kilometres in diameter and was home to 13.5 million people in Türkiye.
During a tour of quake-damaged cities Saturday, Mr Erdogan said a disaster of this scope was rare, and again referred to it as the "disaster of the century."
Rescue of trapped survivors continues
Rescuers, including crews from other countries, continued to probe the rubble in hope of finding additional survivors who could yet beat the increasingly long odds.
Thermal cameras were used to probe the piles of concrete and metal, while rescuers demanded silence so that they could hear the voices of the trapped.
Two sisters were removed from the wreckage on Sunday in the city of Adiyaman, 153 hours after the quake, according to HaberTurk television, which also broadcast the live rescue of a 6-year-old boy removed from the debris of his home in Adiyaman.
The child was wrapped in a space blanket and put into an ambulance. An exhausted rescuer removed his surgical mask and took deep breaths as a group of women could be heard crying in joy.
Türkiye's health minister, Fahrettin Koca, posted a video of a young girl in a navy blue jumper who was rescued. "Good news at the 150th hour. Rescued a little while ago by crews. There is always hope!" he tweeted.
Rescue workers pulled out a man in Antakya, hours after hearing voices from beneath the rubble. Workers said the man, who appeared to be in his late 20s or 30s, was one of nine still trapped in the building.
But when asked whether he knew of any other survivors, he said he hadn't heard any voices for three days.
The man weakly waved his hand as he was passed hand to hand on a stretcher as workers applauded and chanted, "God is great!"
A team of German and Turkish relief workers rescued an 88-year-old woman alive from rubble in Kirikhan, German news agency dpa reported.
The efforts of a team of Italian and Turkish rescuers also paid off when they removed a 35-year-old man from the wreckage in the hard-hit city of Antakya.
Mustafa Sarigul, appeared to be unscathed as he was transported on a stretcher to an ambulance, private NTV television reported.
Overnight, a child was also freed in the town of Nizip, in Gaziantep, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, while a 32-year woman, was rescued from the ruins of a eight-story building in the city of Antakya.
The woman, a teacher named Meltem, asked for tea as soon as she emerged, according to NTV.
In Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre of the first magnitude-7.8 quake that struck early Monday morning, efforts were underway to reach a survivor detected by sniffer dogs, beneath a now-pancaked seven-story building.
Those found alive, however, remained the rare exception.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction in Antakya's outskirts on Saturday.
Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously.
The hundreds of graves, spaced no more than a metre apart, were marked with simple wooden planks set vertically in the ground.
Syrians left 'abandoned' after quake
The picture is less clear of the plight across the border in Syria.
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, said in a statement that Syrians have been left "looking for international help that hasn't arrived."
"We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned," he said.
"My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can."
The first UN convoy to reach north-west Syria from Türkiye was on Thursday, three days after the earthquake.
Before that, the only cargo coming across the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Türkiye-Syria border was a steady stream of bodies of earthquake victims — Syrian refugees who had fled the war in their country and settled in Türkiye but perished in the quake — coming home for burial.
Political disputes have also held up aid convoys sent from areas of north-east Syria controlled by US-backed Kurdish groups to those controlled by the Syrian government and by Turkish-backed rebels who have fought with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces over the years.
The death toll in Syria's north-western rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue worker group the White Helmets.
The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, though the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn't been updated in days.
AP