The authorities of Turkey have raised this Thursday to more than 43,500 the number of deaths due to the earthquakes registered on February 6 in the province of Kahramanmaras (south), located near the border with Syriaa country where around 4,000 people have also died, totaling more than 47,000 deaths between both territories.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soyluhas indicated in statements given to the Turkish television channel TRT Haber that so far 43,556 deaths have been confirmed, before adding that the earthquake was “one of the most powerful in the world.”
“We are responsible to each of our citizens who lost their lives. This trauma can only be overcome with great unity and solidarity. We will come out of this stronger,” she said.
“We are sad. Our cities have been destroyed, but that doesn’t mean our hope is gone. We have to keep this hope alive, more than ever. We have to work even harder,” he stressed.
Likewise, he stressed that for now there have been nearly 8,000 aftershocks from the first earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.4 on the open Richter scale, while stating that 75 to 80 percent of the buildings in Kahramanmaras have been damaged.
To the balance of deaths in Turkey must be added 1,414 people killed in government-controlled areas of Syria and 2,274 dead in rebel-held areasaccording to data from the Syrian Civil Defense, known as ‘white helmets’.
However, the number of victims of the earthquake in Syria is much more difficult to calculate, especially in the northwest of the country, in the hands of rebel groups. The United Nations estimates that between 4,000 and 4,400 people They would have died in the area, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).