Turkey earthquake death toll rises to 40,689 This was announced on Sunday, February 19, by the head of the Office for the Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (AFAD) Yunus Sezer.
“Unfortunately, the death toll is growing, at the moment it is 40,689 people,” he said on local TV channels.
Sezer stressed that search and rescue operations have been completed in most regions of Turkey, but the search for survivors continues.
Devastating earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred on February 6 in the province of Kahramanmaras in southeastern Turkey near the border with Syria. More than 430 thousand people were evacuated from disaster areas.
The head of the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO), Hans Kluge, called the earthquake the worst natural disaster in the region over the past 100 years. According to him, 26 million people in Turkey and Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance.
On February 19, rescuers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Kyrgyzstan pulled three people out of the rubble in Turkey 13 days after the earthquake. According to preliminary information, they were members of the same family.
