Region

ANTAKYA, Turkey — Hopes were fading on Thursday for rescuing survivors of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which has killed over 17,500 people in one of the deadliest tremors in decades.

Bitter cold has hampered the four-day search of thousands of flattened buildings and the 72-hour mark that experts consider the most likely period to save lives has passed.

Relatives were left scouring body bags laid out in a hospital car park in Turkey's southern city of Antakya to search for missing relatives, an indication of the scale of the tragedy.

"We found my aunt, but not my uncle," said Rania Zaboubi, a Syrian refugee who lost eight members of her family, as other survivors sought loved ones' bodies among the corpses.

The 7.8-magnitude quake struck as people slept early Monday in a region where many people had already suffered loss and displacement due to Syria's civil war.

An official at the Bab Al Hawa border crossing told AFP that an aid convoy reached rebel-held northwestern Syria Thursday, the first since the earthquake that has left survivors sleeping outdoors due to aftershock risks.

A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals, collapsed the economy and prompted electricity, fuel and water shortages.

Temperatures in the Turkish city of Gaziantep plunged to minus five degrees Celsius early Thursday, but thousands of families spent the night in cars and makeshift tents — too scared or banned from returning to their homes.

Parents walked the streets of the city — close to the epicentre of Monday’s earthquake — carrying their children in blankets because it was warmer than sitting in a tent.

Some people have found sanctuary with neighbours or relatives. Some have left the region. But many have nowhere to go.

Gyms, mosques, schools and some stores have opened up at night. But beds are still at a premium and thousands spend the nights in cars with engines running to provide heat.

“When we sit down, it is painful and I fear for anyone who is trapped under the rubble in this,” said Melek Halici, who wrapped her two-year-old daughter in a blanket as they watched rescuers working into the night.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after mounting criticism online over the initial disaster response, visited one of the hardest-hit spots, Kahramanmaras, and acknowledged problems.

“Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this,” he said on Wednesday.

Officials and medics said 14,351 people had died in Turkey and 3,162 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 17,513. Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply.

“We are now racing against the clock to save lives together,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter.

Despite the dimming hopes for rescues, thousands of local and foreign searchers have not given up in the hunt for more survivors.

Two dozen children and some of their parents from northern Cyprus — 39 Turkish Cypriots in all — were on a school trip to join a volleyball tournament when the quake hit their hotel in southeast Turkey’s Adiyaman.

Their home region’s government has declared a national mobilisation, hiring a private plane so they could join the search-and-rescue effort for the children.

Ilhami Bilgen, whose brother Hasan was on the volleyball team, looked at the frightening pile of concrete slabs and heavy bricks that used to be the hotel.

“There’s a hollow over there. The children may have crawled into it,” Bilgen said. “We still haven’t given up hope.”

Dozens of nations, including China and the United States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived.

In Brussels, the EU is planning a donor conference in March to mobilise international aid for Syria and Turkey.

The European Union said the conference would be held in coordination with Turkish authorities “to mobilise funds from the international community in support for the people” of both countries.

The bloc was swift to dispatch rescue teams to Turkey after the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country on Monday close to the border with Syria.

But it initially offered only minimal assistance to Syria through existing humanitarian programmes because of EU sanctions imposed since 2011 on the government of President Bashar Assad in response to his brutal crackdown on protesters, which spiralled into a civil war.

On Wednesday, Damascus made an official plea to the EU for help, the bloc’s commissioner for crisis management said.

The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.

Monday’s quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province.

In 1999, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Cracks have emerged within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline government, with a row over the demolition of a settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank testing the fledgling coalition.

Netanyahu vowed in December to expand settlements across the West Bank, as he returned to power at the helm of the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

But a split over policy on the ground surfaced last month, when Israeli forces moved in to dismantle a wildcat outpost in the northern West Bank dubbed Or Haim on orders from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Despite such outposts being considered illegal by the state, two far-right members of the cabinet, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, objected to its demolition.

"There won't be one law for the Arabs and another for the Jews... law is law!" said Ben-Gvir, calling for the demolition of unauthorised Palestinian construction in the largest part of the West Bank where Israel exercises civil as well as security control.

Ben-Gvir has authority over border police operating in the West Bank, while Smotrich has taken on an additional role overseeing civil affairs in the Palestinian territory.

Netanyahu backed Gallant over the outpost affair, saying settlements must be "coordinated in advance with the prime minister and security officials, which was not done in this case".

While the Or Haim outpost consisted of just a handful of makeshift structures, the handling of its demolition hints at problems within the coalition.

‘Very dangerous’ 

Gideon Rahat, senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said the situation has “very dangerous potential for the state of Israel”.

“It’s not normal to have two people that have parallel responsibilities when it comes to the use of force,” he told AFP, with Smotrich sitting in the second ministerial post created in the defence ministry.

Smotrich boycotted a cabinet meeting in protest over the handling over the affair.

Israeli soldiers returned to the Or Haim site two days after the initial evacuation, to expel settlers attempting to rebuild in the area.

“While this seems like a small conflict that was resolved, it shouldn’t be there in the first place,” said Rahat.

The issue is bound to resurface because there are dozens of similar outposts dotted across the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the June War of 1967.

All settlements in occupied territory are deemed illegal under international law, but Israel distinguishes between wildcat outposts, built without its permission, and state-approved settlements which are home to an estimated 475,000 Israelis.

At the Maoz Esther outpost, northwest of Ramallah, a 20-year-old resident said she hoped Smotrich will “take all of his ideals and implement them”.

“The fact that there is a right-wing government is good, but there are a lot of influences from outside,” said Emona, who requested her surname be withheld for personal reasons.

Construction at Maoz Esther began more than a decade ago, according to Israeli anti-settlement movement Peace Now, and the outpost has been cleared and rebuilt repeatedly.

For Emmanuel Navon, a politics professor at Tel Aviv University, Smotrich’s decision to skip the Cabinet meeting was intended to “show his constituents that he cares about his agenda”.

‘Hit the jackpot’ 

But he expected Netanyahu not to be swayed by his extreme-right allies.

The prime minister will “focus on settlement expansion, not too much, not too little. He’s always playing his game of equilibrium between international pressure and domestic pressure”.

The dispute is unlikely to bring down the coalition, because both the premier and his cabinet ministers, Smotrich included, are determined to stay in power.

Netanyahu’s “not going to let go, because of his legal troubles. They’re not going to let go because they hit the jackpot” by entering government, Navon said.

The prime minister has been on trial for months on corruption charges, which he denies.

At another settlement outpost in the northern West Bank, resident Itamar Azulai was against Smotrich’s support for Or Haim.

“I think it was a mistake to build it from the beginning,” said the 60-year-old, running a cafe at the Har Gidon outpost near Nablus.

Unlike Or Haim, Har Gidon receives the same municipal services as state-approved settlements, although Israeli authorities did not immediately confirm whether that means it has been given retroactive approval.

For Azulai, the fervent support for settlements from the Netanyahu government means there should no longer be any need for outposts.

“They will try to push that the big settlements will become legal, not the small ones,” he said, flipping burgers on a grill.

“Now with the new government it needs to be done properly, not overnight.”

SANLIURFA, Turkey — A massive rescue effort in Turkey and Syria battled frigid weather in a race against time on Tuesday to find survivors under buildings flattened by an earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people.

Tremors that inflicted more suffering on a border area already plagued by conflict left people on the streets burning debris to try to stay warm.

Rescuers were working on collapsed apartments with heavy equipment as a worldwide relief effort promised food, search teams and equipment for the disaster zone.

"We live on the first floor out of three, we're too scared to return," said Imam Caglar, 42, in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa. "Our building is not safe at all."

"My mother-in-law, my father-in-law, and two of my father-in-law's sons [are trappe]," said Mahmoud Al Ali in the Syrian city of Aleppo. "We are sitting here in the cold and rain and waiting for the rescuers to start digging."

The 7.8-magnitude quake struck on Monday as people slept, flattening thousands of structures, trapping an unknown number of people and potentially impacting millions.

Whole rows of buildings collapsed, leaving some of the heaviest devastation near the quake's epicentre between the Turkish cities of Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras.

The destruction led to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declaring Tuesday a three-month state of emergency in 10 south-eastern provinces.

Fears toll will rise 

A winter storm has compounded the misery by rendering many roads — some of them damaged by the quake — almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams that stretch for kilometres in some regions.

The cold rain and snow are a risk both for people forced from their homes — who took refuge in mosques, schools or even bus shelters — and the survivors buried under debris.

"It is now a race against time," said World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"We have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable," he added.

Turkey put the latest death toll at 3,419 in that country alone — bringing the confirmed tally in both Turkey and Syria to 5,021.

There are fears that the toll will rise inexorably, with WHO officials estimating up to 20,000 may have died.

WHO warned that up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquake and urged nations to rush help to the disaster zone.

The Syrian Red Crescent appealed to Western countries to lift sanctions and provide aid as President Bashar Assad’s government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international relief efforts.

Washington and the European Commission said on Monday that humanitarian programmes supported by them were responding to the destruction in Syria.

‘My family under rubble’ 

The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO also said it was ready to provide assistance after two sites listed on its World Heritage list in Syria and Turkey sustained damage.

In addition to the damage to Aleppo’s old city and the fortress in the south-eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, UNESCO said at least three other World Heritage sites could be affected.

Much of the quake-hit area of northern Syria has already been decimated by years of war and aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russia forces that destroyed homes, hospitals and clinics.

Residents in the quake-devastated town of Jandairis in northern Syria used their bare hands and pickaxes to for survivors, as that was all they had to get the job done.

“My whole family is under there — my sons, my daughter, my son-in-law... There’s no one else to get them out,” said Ali Battal, his face streaked with blood and head swathed in a wool shawl against the bitter cold.

“I hear their voices. I know they’re alive but there’s no one to rescue them,” adds the man in his 60s.

The Syrian health ministry reported damage across the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, where Russia is leasing a naval facility.

Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo — Syria’s pre-war commercial hub — often collapsed due to the dilapidated infrastructure.

Following the earthquake, prisoners mutinied at a jail holding mostly Islamic State group members in north-western Syria, with at least 20 escaping, a source at the facility told AFP.

Offers of help 

The United States, the European Union and Russia led international messages of condolence and offers of help.

President Joe Biden promised his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the United States will send “any and all” aid needed to help recover.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered to provide “the necessary assistance” to Turkey, whose combat drones are helping Kyiv fight the Russian invasion.

Chinese state media said on Tuesday that Beijing was sending rescuers, medical teams and other supplies.

Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.

The country’s last 7.8-magnitude tremor was in 1939, when 33,000 died in the eastern Erzincan province.

The Turkish region of Duzce suffered a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in 1999, when more than 17,000 people died.

Experts have long warned a large quake could devastate Istanbul, a megalopolis of 16 million people filled with rickety homes.

NABLUS, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said, with the Israeli forces saying they had fired on soldiers.

The ministry said Hamza Amjad Al Ashqar, 17, was "killed by a bullet in the face fired by the occupation [Israeli] soldiers during the aggression on Nablus".

The Israeli forces said troops had "responded with live fire towards an armed suspect who fired at them".

"A hit was identified," the Israeli forces said in a statement, adding that "rocks, explosive devices and Molotov cocktails were hurled at the soldiers" conducting the raid.

A military spokesperson could not immediately tell AFP what weapon the armed suspect had fired.

A Palestinian security source, who was not authorised to speak to the media, said Ashqar was from Nablus' Askar refugee camp.

Three people were arrested during the Israeli raid on the city, the source added.

No Palestinian group immediately claimed Ashqar as a member.

The Lions' Den, a local militant alliance that boasts recruits from across the longstanding factions, said its fighters had been involved in the clashes but did not claim Ashqar as a member.

Separately, official Palestinian news agency Wafa said around 20 Palestinians were arrested in Burqin, near the flashpoint city of Jenin.

There has been a mounting death toll from a spate of Israeli raids in West Bank towns and cities in recent months.

On Monday, Israeli forces killed five suspected Palestinian gunmen in a raid in Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, after a days-long search for suspects in a shooting in a restaurant near the city.

Since the start of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 42 Palestinians — including attackers, and civilians. Six Israeli civilians, including a child, and one Ukrainian civilian have been killed over the same period.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 war.

RABAT — A Moroccan appeals court has increased the prison sentences of eight migrants over a deadly attempted crossing into the Spanish enclave of Melilla, their lawyer said on Tuesday.

Around 2,000 people, many of them Sudanese, stormed the frontier on June 24 in a bid to reach Spanish territory across one of the European Union's two land borders with Africa. At least 23 people died.

The court in Nador, a north-eastern town near the border with Melilla, "increased on Monday evening the sentences of three migrants to four years in prison, and three years for five others", lawyer Mbarek Bouirig said.

The charges against them include illegal entry to Morocco, "disobedience" and "damaging public property", he told AFP.

The three defendants given a four-year term had initially been sentenced to three years behind bars, and the five others to two and a half years.

The appeals court upheld the two-and-a-half-year sentences of seven more defendants in the same case, Bouirig said.

Moroccan authorities said 23 undocumented migrants died in the June incident, the worst death toll in years of such attempted crossings.

The Moroccan Association for Human Rights put the number of dead at 27, while Amnesty International said at least 37 people lost their lives.

According to the authorities, 140 Moroccan police officers were injured.

Morocco has since handed dozens of migrants sentences of up to four years' imprisonment, with many receiving harsher sentences upon appeal.

Bouirig called on the judiciary to reduce their sentences, urging "consideration of their status as asylum seekers".

Melilla and its sister enclave of Ceuta have long been a magnet for those desperate to escape grinding poverty and hunger.

Both Morocco and Spain have insisted the migrants were to blame for the tragedy, with Rabat saying some died after falling while trying to scramble over the fence, while others suffocated as people panicked and a stampede started.

JERICHO, Palestinian Territories — Israel said its forces killed on Monday five alleged Palestinian gunmen in a raid in the occupied West Bank, after a days-long search for suspects in a shooting near Jericho.

Hamas Islamists confirmed its fighters were among the dead, saying in a statement the Gaza-based group was mourning members of its military wing killed "in an armed clash with the Zionist occupation".

The early morning Israeli raid came amid a spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence and after days of what Jericho authorities have described as a "siege" on the city since the shooting attack late last month.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the two suspected assailants and three others were killed on Monday by agents from the Shin Bet domestic security agency and soldiers.

Israeli forces "took out five of those terrorists, two of whom had tried to carry out the attack" on January 28, the premier said.

An Israeli security official, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP the army was holding the bodies of the Palestinian dead.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have used the remains of people killed in clashes or attacks as bargaining chips throughout the conflict.

The army said in a statement "a number" of armed men were killed in a gunfight during the raid on the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp at the entrance to the city, which lies close to the Jordanian border.

It reported no casualties among the Israeli forces.

An AFP photographer saw bullet holes covering the metal door of a wooden hut in the camp, while blood soaked into the floor inside.

Young Palestinians set tyres ablaze to block a road leading into Jericho, while shops and schools were shut as residents observed a general strike after the raid.

The Palestinian health ministry said one person remained in critical condition after being shot in the head by Israeli forces.

The ministry identified the five men killed and said they were aged between 21 and 28.

Violence is rare in Jericho, a popular destination for tourists who are drawn to the ancient city’s religious and cultural sites.

Israel said Monday’s raid had targeted “the Hamas terrorist squad that carried out the shooting attack” on January 28, when according to the army two armed men approached an Israeli settlement restaurant near the Palestinian city.

One of the gunmen had opened fire at the restaurant but his weapon jammed after firing just one bullet that did not hurt anyone.

Since the two suspected assailants fled the scene, the army has reinforced its presence around Jericho and carried out extensive searches at checkpoints.

An AFP correspondent last week reported hours-long queues as cars backed up at the entrances to Jericho.

Jericho Governor Jihad Abu Al Assal said the situation amounted to a “siege” which was “incurring huge costs” to local businesses, agriculture and the tourism industry.

‘Heinous crime’ 

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called Monday’s deadly raid a “major crime” and a “flagrant violation of international law”.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh described those killed as “heroes” who “fought until they were martyred defending their land and their holy sites”.

“The successive killings by the enemy in the West Bank will be disastrous for them,” he said in a statement.

Since the start of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 41 Palestinian adults and children — including attackers, militants and civilians.

Six Israeli civilians, including a child, and one Ukrainian civilian have been killed over the same period in a single attack in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 June War.

Last year was the deadliest year in the West Bank since the United Nations started tracking casualties in the territory in 2005.

There were 235 fatalities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2022, with nearly 90 per cent of the deaths on the Palestinian side, according to AFP figures.