Quake death toll tops 33,000, Turkiye starts legal action against builders

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An aerial photo shows collapsed buildings in Antakya on Feb. 10, 2023, after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country's southeast earlier in the week. (AFP)
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Updated 13 February 2023
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Quake death toll tops 33,000, Turkiye starts legal action against builders

  • UN relief chief Martin Griffiths: Chances of finding survivors dim with each passing day

ANKARA: Rescuers pulled more survivors from the rubble on Sunday, nearly a week after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkiye and Syria, as Turkish authorities sought to maintain order across the disaster zone and began legal action over building collapses.
With chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries from Monday’s earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 33,000 and looked set to keep growing. It was the deadliest quake in Turkiye since 1939.
In a central district of one of the worst hit cities, Antakya in southern Turkiye, business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.
Residents and aid workers who came from other cities cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.
Facing questions over his response to the earthquake as he prepares for a national election that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, President Tayyip Erdogan has said the government will deal firmly with looters.
In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving homeless yet again many people who had already been displaced several times by a decade-old civil war. The region has received little aid compared to government-held areas.
“We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted from the Turkiye-Syria border, where only a single crossing is open for UN aid supplies.
“They rightly feel abandoned,” Griffiths said, adding that he was focused on addressing that swiftly.
More than six days after the first quake struck, emergency workers still found a handful of people clinging to life in the wreckage of homes that had become tombs for many thousands.
A team of Chinese rescuers and Turkish firefighters saved 54-year-old Syrian Malik Milandi after he survived 156 hours in the rubble in Antakya.
On the main road into the city the few buildings left standing had large cracks or caved-in facades. Traffic occasionally halted as rescuers called for silence to detect signs of remaining life under the ruins.
A father and daughter, a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among other survivors pulled from the ruins of collapsed buildings Sunday, but such scenes were becoming rare as the number of dead climbed relentlessly.
At a funeral near Reyhanli, veiled women wailed and beat their chests as bodies were unloaded from lorries — some in closed wood coffins, others in uncovered coffins, and still others just wrapped in blankets.
Some residents sought to retrieve what they could from the destruction.
In Elbistan, epicenter of an aftershock almost as powerful as Monday’s initial 7.8 magnitude quake, 32-year-old mobile shop owner Mustafa Bahcivan said he had come into town almost daily since then. On Sunday he sifted through the rubble searching for any of his phones that might be still be intact and sellable.
“This used to be one of the busiest streets. Now it’s completely gone,” he said.
DETENTION ORDERS
Building quality in a country that lies on several seismic fault lines has come into sharp focus in the aftermath of the quake.
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said 131 suspects had so far been identified as responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of buildings flattened in the 10 affected provinces.
“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries,” he said.
The earthquake hit as Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Even before the disaster, his popularity had been falling due to soaring inflation and a slumping Turkish currency.
Some affected by the quake and opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on, and critics have questioned why the army, which played a key role after a 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner.
Erdogan has acknowledged problems, such as the challenge of delivering aid despite damaged transport links, but said the situation had been brought under control.
SYRIA AID COMPLICATED BY YEARS OF WAR
In Syria, the hostilities that have fractured the country during 12 years of civil war are now hindering relief work.
Earthquake aid from government-held regions into territory controlled by hard-line opposition groups has been held up by approval issues with Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) which controls much of the region, a UN spokesperson said.
An HTS source in Idlib told Reuters the group would not allow any shipments from government-held areas and that aid would be coming in from Turkiye to the north.
The UN is hoping to ramp up cross-border operations by opening an additional two border points between Turkiye and opposition-held Syria for aid deliveries, spokesperson Jens Laerke said.
The foreign minister of US ally the United Arab Emirates met Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday in the first high-level visit by an Arab official since the quake.
Several Arab countries have provided support to Assad in the quake’s aftermath. Western countries, which sought to isolate Assad after his crackdown on protests in 2011 and the outbreak of civil war, are major contributors to UN relief efforts across Syria but have provided little direct aid to Damascus during the civil war.
The first shipment of European earthquake aid to government-held parts of Syria also arrived in Damascus on Sunday.
UN Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said in Damascus the United Nations was mobilizing funding to support Syria. “We’re trying to tell everyone: Put politics aside, this is a time to unite behind a common effort to support the Syrian people,” he said.
The quake ranks as the world’s sixth deadliest natural disaster this century, its death toll exceeding the 31,000 from a quake in neighboring Iran in 2003.
It has killed 29,605 people in Turkiye and more than 3,500 in Syria, where tolls have not been updated for two days.
Turkiye said about 80,000 people were in hospital, and more than 1 million in temporary shelters.


Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill at least 29

Updated 8 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill at least 29

  • Thursday’s toll included eight people killed in an Israeli air strike on the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Yunis refugee
  • Four people were killed in an air strike east of Shaaf in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Thursday Israeli bombardment killed at least 29 people since midnight in the war-ravaged territory, which has been under Israeli aid blockade for nearly two months.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile said that while the military’s mission was to bring home all the hostages from Gaza, its “supreme goal” was to achieve victory against Hamas.
Israel resumed its campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18, after a two-month truce collapsed over disagreements between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas whose 2023 attack triggered the conflict.
Civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir said Thursday’s toll included eight people killed in an air strike on the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza.
Four people were killed in an air strike east of Shaaf in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood, he told AFP.
At least 17 more were killed in other attacks across the Palestinian territory, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people near the central city of Deir el-Balah, the agency said.
“We came here and found all these houses destroyed, and children, women and young people all bombed to pieces,” said Ahmed Abu Zarqa after a deadly strike in Khan Yunis.
“This is no way to live. Enough, we’re tired, enough!
“We don’t know what to do with our lives any more. We’d rather die than live this kind of life.”
At Nasser Hospital
AFP images showed residents digging through rubble in search of bodies, which were carried away on stretchers under blankets.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, rescuers rushed a screaming wounded child out of an ambulance, as a group of women mourned.
“What have the children done wrong? What have we done wrong? Enough is enough. Just drop a nuclear bomb on us,” said Ghada Abu Sahlul as she mourned the death of a relative.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.


Israel vows ‘significant force’ if Syria govt fails to protect Druze

Sheikh Laith al-Balous, centre, a Druze leader in the southern Sweida province, speaks with Sweida governor Mustafa al-Bakour.
Updated 34 min 59 sec ago
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Israel vows ‘significant force’ if Syria govt fails to protect Druze

  • At least 101 people have been killed in two days of sectarian clashes near Syria’s capital, most of them Druze fighters, a war monitor said

JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Thursday that Israel will respond forcefully if Syria’s government fails to protect the Druze minority, after two days of deadly sectarian clashes near Damascus.
“Should the attacks on the Druze resume and the Syrian regime fail to prevent them, Israel will respond with significant force,” Katz said in a statement.
Israel has ramped up its support for Syria’s Druze in recent days, with Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Thursday urging the international community to “fulfil its role in protecting the minorities in Syria — especially the Druze — from the regime and its gangs of terror.”
At least 101 people have been killed in two days of sectarian clashes near Syria’s capital, most of them Druze fighters, a war monitor said in an updated toll on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Israel carried out a strike against what it called an “extremist group” preparing to attack members of the Druze community near Damascus.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strike on the town of Sahnaya sent a “stern message” to Syria’s new government.
Israel’s armed forces chief later ordered the military to prepare to strike Syrian government targets if the Druze community faced more violence.
Israel’s military said two injured Druze Syrians were evacuated from Syria on Thursday for treatment in Israel, after announcing Wednesday that three had been evacuated.
It did not specify how or where they had been injured.
In its statement on Thursday, it said they were taken for treatment to the town of Safed in northern Israel “after sustaining injuries in Syrian territory.”
“The IDF (military) is deployed in southern Syria and is prepared to prevent the entry of hostile forces into the area of Druze villages,” it added.


Weekend round of nuclear talks between US and Iran postponed

Updated 50 min 29 sec ago
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Weekend round of nuclear talks between US and Iran postponed

  • Message online from Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi made the announcement in a post on the social platform X

DUBAI: Planned negotiations between Iran and the United States this weekend over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program have been postponed, Oman announced Thursday.
A message online from Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi made the announcement in a post on the social platform X.
“For logistical reasons we are rescheduling the US Iran meeting provisionally planned for Saturday May 3rd,” he wrote. “New dates will be announced when mutually agreed.”
Al-Busaidi, who has mediated the talks through three rounds so far, did not elaborate.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei issued a statement describing the talks as being “postponed at the request of Oman’s foreign minister.” He said Iran remain committed to reaching ”a fair and lasting agreement.”
Meanwhile, a person familiar with the US negotiators said that America “had never confirmed its participation” in a fourth round of talks in Rome. However, the person said the US expected the talks to occur “in the near future.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.
Rome soon will see the Vatican begin the conclave on Wednesday to pick a new pope after the death of Pope Francis. Two other rounds of talks have been held in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic closing in on a half-century of enmity. The negotiations have been led by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers did limit Tehran’s program. However, Trump unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018, setting in motion years of attacks and tensions. The wider Middle East also remains on edge over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the US continues an airstrike campaign, called “Operation Rough Rider,” that has been targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who long have been backed by Iran. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth early Thursday warned Iran over the rebels.
“Message to IRAN: We see your LETHAL support to The Houthis. We know exactly what you are doing,” he wrote. “You know very well what the US Military is capable of — and you were warned. You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing.”
Last Saturday’s round of talks, which included experts drilling down into the details of a possible deal, also took place as an explosion rocked an Iranian port, killing at least 70 people and injuring more than 1,000 others.


Israeli settlers perform ‘epic prostration’ after storming Al-Aqsa Mosque

Updated 01 May 2025
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Israeli settlers perform ‘epic prostration’ after storming Al-Aqsa Mosque

  • Israeli settlers regularly tour Al-Aqsa under the protection of Israeli police
  • 13,064 settlers entered the site in the first quarter of 2025

LONDON: Dozens of Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday, conducting a provocative tour in front of Palestinian worshippers.

Settlers regularly tour the site under the protection of Israeli police and are often accompanied by government officials and far-right ministers.

On Thursday, they performed Talmudic rituals in front of the Dome of the Rock Mosque, chanting loudly in the presence of Palestinian worshippers, eyewitnesses told the Wafa news agency.

Some settlers performed the Talmudic ritual known as “epic prostration,” in which the worshipper bows low to the ground in a display of humility and reverence, while others raised Israeli flags.

In April, thousands of Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa compound to mark the Jewish holiday of Passover. In the same month, several Arab countries condemned a video generated by artificial intelligence that depicted the destruction of Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock mosques, which was attributed to Israeli settlers.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem governorate reported that 13,064 settlers visited the site in the first quarter of 2025.


Devastated father wonders why an Israeli strike killed his 4-year-old daughter

Updated 01 May 2025
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Devastated father wonders why an Israeli strike killed his 4-year-old daughter

  • That afternoon, an Israeli strike hit a tent on the side of the road, killing Massa and some of the other children
  • “She had a ball on her lap with a doll in her hand. Will she fight them with her football or doll?” her father said

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Massa Abed, 4, brought a rubber ball and her doll to play with friends on the street near her family’s home on Sunday. It was a mundane day in Zawaida, the central Gaza town where the Abeds returned weeks ago, with calm largely restored in the area.
But that afternoon, an Israeli strike hit a tent on the side of the road, killing Massa and some of the other children.
Her older brother, 16, grabbed Massa’s little body and rushed to the hospital on a donkey cart. When she was pronounced dead, he wailed, holding her.
Days later, Massa’s father, Samy Abed, turned the green ball in his hand, describing the incident to The Associated Press.
“She had a ball on her lap with a doll in her hand. Will she fight them with her football or doll?” he said. “She’s 4 years old. What can she do? She can’t even carry a rock.”
The Israeli army did not respond to requests for comment on the strike, and it remains unclear why the area — near the city of Deir Al-Balah — was struck or who was targeted. Israeli officials have often blamed Hamas for civilian casualties, saying the Palestinian militant group regularly operates from residential areas and hospitals and accusing it using civilians as human shields.
Since Israel resumed attacksmore than a month ago, at least 809 children have been killed, said Zaher Al-Wahidi, a spokesperson with Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Overall, the ministry says, more than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, in October 2023. Ministry officials do not differentiate between civilians and militant deaths but say that more than half the dead have been women and children. Israel says it has killed over 20,000 militants, without providing details on those deaths.
On March 18, a surprise Israeli bombardment shattered a six-week ceasefire mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt; hundreds of Palestinians were killed. Mediation efforts to restore the ceasefire have faltered, and Israel has vowed more devastation if Hamas doesn’t release the remaining hostages kidnapped in its rampage on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
That Hamas attack killed some 1,200 people and abducted 250 others. Israel says 59 hostages remain in captivity, at least 35 of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza, not allowing food, medicine, or assistance to enter the strip. The United Nations World Food Program said its stockpiles that it used to feed over 600,000 people daily are empty. Israel says the blockade’s aim is to increase pressure on Hamas to release the rest of the hostages and to disarm.
At the hospital where Massa’s brother brought her, bodies of her young playmates lay nearby — a reminder, relatives said, of children in danger as attacks continue.
Massa had the confidence and bubbly personality of a teenager, socializing and conversing with everyone, her father said as he scrolled through photos and videos where she played and posed for the cameras.
He soon turned to photos of her body at the hospital.
“We see her when we’re asleep. When we wake up, we remember her,” he said.
Majdi Abed, Massa’s uncle, says he has regular visions of her. “I was sitting right here at 7 a.m., and I felt the girl coming toward me,” he said, describing how he frequently bursts into tears upon realizing it’s not really Massa.
The family still expects her to show up at their breakfast table.
But, her father said, “her spot is empty.”