Death toll exceeds 28,000, Turkey starts legal action over some building collapses

Istanbul, Turkey- Six days after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkey and Syria, rescuers continued to extricate people from the rubble on Sunday as Turkish authorities worked to maintain order throughout the disaster area and began legal proceedings regarding some building collapses. The death toll in both countries from Monday’s earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 28,000 and appeared to keep rising as the likelihood of discovering more survivors decreased. It was Turkey’s deadliest earthquake since 1939. In order to prevent their homes from being looted, displaced residents in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, close to the epicentre, claimed they had pitched tents as close as possible to their damaged or destroyed homes.

Despite receiving less aid than government-held areas, the disaster in Syria was most severe in the rebel-held northwest, which forced many people to flee their homes for a second time after being uprooted by a civil war that lasted for ten years. From the Turkey-Syria border, where there is only one open border crossing for U.N. aid supplies, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted, “We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria.” Griffiths said, “They rightly feel abandoned, and I’m focused on dealing with that quickly.

Erdogan has issued a warning that looters will face harsh punishment. In the wake of the earthquake, the quality of construction in a nation with multiple seismic fault lines has come into sharp focus.

According to Vice President Fuat Oktay, 131 suspects have been named as having been involved in the collapse of some of the thousands of destroyed buildings in the 10 affected provinces.