ANKARA: The death toll from the earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria that struck on Feb. 6 surpassed 50,000 on Friday after Turkiye declared more than 44,000 people died.
The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said the death toll in Turkiye due to earthquakes rose to 44,218 on Friday night.
With Syria’s latest announced death toll of 5,914, the combined death toll in the two countries rose to above 50,000.
This comes as Turkiye has begun work to rebuild homes following this month’s devastating earthquakes, a government official said on Friday.
More than 160,000 buildings containing 520,000 apartments collapsed or were severely damaged in the Feb. 6 earthquakes that killed tens of thousands in Turkiye and neighboring Syria.
President Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to rebuild homes within a year, although experts have said the authorities should put safety before speed. Some buildings that were meant to withstand tremors crumbled in the latest earthquakes.
“For several projects, tenders and contracts have been done. The process is moving very fast,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding there would be no compromise on safety.
Authorities say tents have been dispatched for the many who are homeless, but people have reported trouble accessing them.
“I have eight children. We are living in a tent. There is water on top (of the tent) and the ground is damp. We are asking for more tents and they don’t give them to us,” Melek, 67, who was waiting in a line to collect aid outside a high school in the town of Hassa.
The school was being used as an aid distribution center by a group of volunteers called Interrail Turkiye. One volunteer, Sumeyye Karabocek, said the shortage of tents remained the biggest problem.
Erdogan’s government has endured a wave of criticism over both its response to the devastation and what many Turks say were years of non-enforcement of construction quality control.
The Turkish government’s initial plan now is to build 200,000 apartments and 70,000 village houses at a cost of at least $15 billion, he said. US bank JPMorgan had estimated rebuilding houses and infrastructure will cost $25 billion.
The UNDP said it estimated that the destruction has left 1.5 million people homeless, with 500,000 new homes needed.
It said it had requested $113.5 million from the $1 billion in funds appealed for by the United Nations last week, adding that it would focus this money on clearing away mountains of rubble.
The UNDP estimates that the disaster had produced between 116 million and 210 million tons of rubble, compared with 13 million tons of rubble after the earthquake in northwest Turkiye in 1999.
Turkiye also issued new regulations under which companies and charities can build homes and workplaces to donate to the urbanization ministry for people in need.
Many survivors have left the region of southern Turkiye that was hit by the quake or have been settled in tents, container homes and other government-sponsored accommodation.
In Antakya, Saeed Sleiman Ertoglu, 56, loaded up what remained of his stock from his waterpipe shop that was not damaged.
“The glassware was very beautiful, more than usual, but then we had this (earthquake), and it all got ruined,” he said, after his home and shop survived the first tremors but not the later one. He estimated that just 5 percent of his merchandise survived.
“What can we do?,” he said. “This is an act of God, and God’s will always bears gifts.”
(With Reuters)
Earthquake death toll surpasses 50,000 in Turkiye and Syria
https://arab.news/cy6za
Earthquake death toll surpasses 50,000 in Turkiye and Syria
Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon
- The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries
DAMASUS: Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the Lebanese border on Monday, with the defense ministry reporting two civilians injured in the attacks.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since its conflict with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into full-scale war in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the bridges of Al-Jubaniyeh, Al-Daf, Arjoun, and the Al-Nizariyeh Gate in the Qusayr area,” state television said, with official news agency SANA reporting damage in the attacks.
The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries.
The attacks “injured two civilians and caused material losses,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, based in Britain, said the attacks had “killed two Syrians working with Hezbollah and injured five others,” giving a preliminary toll.
Earlier, the monitor with a network of sources in Syria had said the “Israeli strikes targeted” an official land border crossing in the Qusayr area and six bridges on the Orontes River near the border with Lebanon.
Since September, Israel has bombed land crossings between Lebanon and Syria, putting them out of service. It accuses Hezbollah of using the routes, key for people fleeing the war in Lebanon, to transfer weapons from Syria.
Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case
- A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.
11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor
- Seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in the attack and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria.
BEIRUT: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Monday 11 people including civilians were killed in attacks by a Kurdish-led force on positions of Turkiye-backed militants in north Syria.
“A woman, her two children and a man were killed... in the bombing of a military position... used by Ankara-backed factions for human smuggling operations to Turkiye,” the Britain-based monitor said.
It said seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in that incident and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control swathes of northeast Syria.
SDF special forces infiltrated a Turkiye-backed group’s military position and killed three militants, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The SDF also booby-trapped a military position as they withdrew, in an attack that killed another four pro-Turkiye militants but also four civilians including a woman and her two children, the Observatory said.
On Sunday, 15 Ankara-backed Syrian militants were killed after the SDF infiltrated their territory, the monitor reported earlier.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish troops and allied armed factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.
Sudan women facing ‘epidemic of sexual violence’: UN
PORT SUDAN: The United Nations humanitarian chief raised the alarm on Monday over an “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in war-torn Sudan, saying the world “must do better.”
“I feel ashamed that we have not been able to protect you, and I feel ashamed for my fellow men for what they have done,” Tom Fletcher, who heads the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on his first visit to Port Sudan.
The Red Sea city has become Sudan’s de facto capital since April 2023, when Khartoum was engulfed by war between the regular military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced more than 11 million people and created what the UN says is the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.
Nearly 26 million people — around half the population — face the threat of mass starvation, as both warring sides have been accused of using hunger as a weapon of war.
During his visit, Fletcher met army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and discussed efforts to “increase the delivery of aid across borders and across conflict lines.”
Aid workers and humanitarian agencies say Burhan’s army-aligned government has enforced severe bureaucratic hurdles to their work.
At an event in a Port Sudan school to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Fletcher said the world “must do better” by the women of Sudan, who have been exposed to systematic sexual violence.
The UN’s independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan last month documented escalating sexual violence, including “rape, sexual exploitation and abduction for sexual purposes as well as allegations of enforced marriages and human trafficking.”
“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the fact-finding mission.
“The situation faced by vulnerable civilians, in particular women and girls of all ages, is deeply alarming and needs urgent address,” he added.
EU offers Morocco €200 million in quake reconstruction aid
- Relations between Morocco and the EU are strained after the European Court of Justice annulled fishing and agricultural deals between the two parties over products from disputed Western Sahara
RABAT: The European Union plans to offer Morocco 200 million euros ($210 million) to help with post-earthquake reconstruction, EU commissioner for neighborhood and enlargement Oliver Varhelyi said on Monday, as the two parties navigate judicial headwinds.
The 6.8 magnitude quake, Morocco’s deadliest since 1960, struck on Sept. 8, 2023, killing more than 2,900 people and damaging vital infrastructure. Morocco said it would invest In a post-earthquake reconstruction plan that includes the upgrade of infrastructure in five years.
The EU will increase its total quake reconstruction aid to Morocco to 1 billion euros, Varhelyi told a press conference in Rabat following talks with foreign minister Nasser Bourita.
Morocco was a “reliable” partner, receiving 5.2 billion euros in EU investments over the last five years, he said.
Relations between Morocco and the EU are strained after the European Court of Justice annulled fishing and agricultural deals between the two parties over products from disputed Western Sahara.
The long-frozen conflict, dating back to 1975, pits Morocco, which considers Western Sahara its own territory, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front independence movement, which seeks a separate state there.
Following the verdict, the European Council and the Commission said they attached “high value” to relations with Morocco.
The EU’s relationship with Morocco needs to be protected from judicial harassment, Bourita said, adding that “there will be no partnerships at the expense of Morocco’s territorial integrity.”
The challenges facing Morocco-EU relations contrast with the stronger economic and political ties Rabat has forged with Madrid and Paris, after the two former colonial powers backed a Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara. ($1 = 0.9499 euros)
