The toll of the disaster continues to grow, ten days after the events. The earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on Monday February 6 killed more than 40,000 people, according to the latest official reports released on Thursday. A total of 41,732 people lost their lives in these earthquakes: 38,044 in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria. The World Health Organization (WHO) called the disaster a “worst natural disaster in a century” having affected a country in the European zone.
On Thursday, Turkish rescuers pulled a 17-year-old girl and a woman in her twenties out of the rubble, nearly eleven days after the quake that devastated the border area between the two countries. In many towns and villages in Turkey and Syria, rescuers are still trying to help any survivors. But each passing hour diminishes the chances that they could have survived in the freezing cold, under the rubble.