Rescuers race to find survivors in Turkey and Syria after quake kills thousands | CBC News

• More than 5,000 people have been killed in Turkey and neighbouring Syria.
• Turkey declares state of emergency for at least 3 months.
• Canada announces its first assistance for the rescue efforts.
• An aid worker with Doctors Without Borders was killed in Syria’s Idlib province.
• Syria Red Crescent wants UN to help co-ordinate aid to rebel-held areas.

Rescuers raced Tuesday to find survivors in the rubble of thousands of buildings brought down by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and multiple aftershocks that struck southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria, with the discovery of more bodies raising the death toll to more than 5,000.

Countries around the world dispatched teams to assist in the rescue efforts, and Turkey’s disaster management agency said more than 24,400 emergency personnel were now on the ground.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that 70 countries had offered help for the search and rescue operation.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would provide “$10 million in immediate aid” to Turkey,” while Minister of International Development Harjit Sajjan said Canada is considering options for on the ground including medical and Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DART).

Turkey was declaring the 10 provinces affected by the devastating earthquakes as disaster zones, Erdogan said, imposing a state of emergency in the region for three months. In addition, hotels in the tourism hub of Antalya will be designated as temporary housing for people impacted by the quakes.

Nurgul Atay told The Associated Press she could hear her mother’s voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, but that her and others’ efforts to get into the ruins had been futile without any rescue crews and heavy equipment to help.

“If only we could lift the concrete slab we’d be able to reach her,” she said. “My mother is 70 years old, she won’t be able to withstand this for long.”

Thousands of rescues, ambassador says

Across Turkey’s Hatay province, just southwest of the earthquake’s epicentre, officials say as many as 1,500 buildings were destroyed and many people reported relatives being trapped under the rubble with no aid or rescue teams arriving. In areas where teams worked, occasional cheers broke out as survivors were brought out of the rubble.

“In this grim picture, there is a ray of hope, the silver lining, and that is our rescue teams have managed to save 8,000 citizens from under the rubble [so far],” Kerim Uras, Turkish ambassador to Canada, told CBC News on Tuesday.

WATCH | Rescuers search through rubble for survivors: 

A joyous moment as Syrian child rescued from deep rubble

A young Syrian girl was rescued Tuesday from deep debris in Jindires, Syria, after the building she was in collapsed.

Thousands of people sheltered in sports centres or fair halls, while others spent the night outside, huddled in blankets around fires. 

Turkey has large numbers of troops in the border region with Syria and has tasked the military with aiding in the rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay. Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said a humanitarian aid brigade based in Ankara and eight military search and rescue teams had also been deployed.

A navy ship docked on Tuesday at the province’s port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to the nearby city of Mersin.

Thick, black smoke rose from another area of the port, where firefighters have not yet been able to douse a fire that broke out among shipping containers that were toppled by the earthquake.

Erdogan said the total number of deaths in Turkey had passed 3,500, with some 22,000 people injured. More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed over 800, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. The country’s rebel-held northwest also has about 800 dead, according to the White Helmets, the emergency organization leading rescue operations, with more than 2,200 injured.

In Syria’s rebel-held northwest, groups that operate there said at least 450 people died, with many hundreds injured.

The medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders confirmed Tuesday that one of its staff members was among the dead after his house in Syria’s Idlib province collapsed, and that others had lost family members.

“We are very shocked and saddened by the impact of this disaster on the thousands of people touched by it, including our colleagues and their families,” said Sebastien Gay, the group’s head of mission in Syria.

Idlib won’t be forgotten: Syrian official

Authorities fear the death toll will keep climbing as the rescuers look for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.

Syria’s Red Crescent said Tuesday it is ready to send relief aid to all the country’s regions including opposition-held areas, and is urging the United Nation to help facilitate the deliveries.

WATCH | Getting aid to war-torn Syria will be complicated, say experts: 

Civil war complicates delivering aid to Syrian earthquake victims

Dozens of countries and NGOs are mobilizing to help earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria. But getting help to Syria, which is 12 years into a civil war, could be complicated.

“We do not differentiate between any of the Syrian people. We are the Syrian Arab Red Crescent for all the Syrian people,” Khaled Hboubati said at a news conference.

“If they [the opposition] opened a road for us, we will go,” Hboubati added. “We have no problem with this.”

He appealed to the United Nations, which has long co-ordinated the aid and relief operations in opposition-held areas, to help.