NEW YORK: The death toll from a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria will “double or more” from its current level of 28,000, UN relief chief Martin Griffiths has said.
Griffiths arrived on Saturday in Turkey’s southern city of Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of the first 7.8-magnitude tremor that upturned millions of lives in the pre-dawn hours of Monday.
He said of the death toll in an interview with Sky News on Saturday: “I think it is difficult to estimate precisely as we need to get under the rubble but I’m sure it will double or more.”
“We haven’t really begun to count the number of dead,” he said.
Officials and medics said 24,617 people were killed in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria. The confirmed total now stands at 28,191.
Tens of thousands of rescue workers are scouring 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. Up to 5.3 million people may have been made homeless in Syria alone.
Almost 26 million people have been affected by the earthquake, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said as it launched a flash appeal on Saturday for $42.8 million to cope with immediate health needs.
Turkey’s disaster agency said more than 32,000 people from Turkish organisations are working on search-and-rescue efforts. There are also 8,294 international rescuers.
“Soon, the search and rescue people will make way for the humanitarian agencies whose job it is to look after the extraordinary numbers of those affected for the next months,” Griffiths said in a video posted to Twitter.
‘terrorism ‘an affront to humanity’
With extremist groups expanding their reach, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday called on the international community not to lower its guard against terrorism.
The appeal came in his message to mark the first-ever ‘International Day for the Prevention of Violent Extremism as and when Conducive to Terrorism’, established in December by the UN General Assembly.
The UN chief described terrorism as an “affront to humanity as it undermines the values that bind us together.”
Terrorism also threatens collective efforts to promote peace and security, protect human rights, provide humanitarian aid, and advance sustainable development, Guterres said.
“We must be more vigilant than ever,” he said, noting that “terrorist and violent extremist groups are finding fertile ground on the internet to spew their vicious venom.”
He said neo-Nazi, white supremacist movements are becoming more dangerous by the day and now represent the top internal security threat in several countries, as well as the fastest growing.
Countries must act to confront the challenge through prevention, and by addressing the underlying conditions that drive terrorism in the first place, he added.
He highlighted the importance of inclusion and ensuring that counter-terrorism strategies reflect a wide array of voices — especially minorities, women, and young people.
Human rights must be at the core of all counter-terrorism policies, he added.
“Today and every day, let us work together to build more peaceful, inclusive, and stable societies in which terror and violent extremism have no home,” the secretary-general said.
