Looting and hygiene concerns complicate the work of rescuers in Turkey

Ali Kuchukgokmen

ANTAKYA, Turkey (Reuters) – Volunteers trying to find fewer survivors in the earthquake-hit Turkish city of Antakya said on Saturday that searches and hygiene issues have added to their difficult task.

One resident looking for a colleague buried in the collapsed building said he witnessed the looting in the days following Monday’s earthquake before leaving the city for the countryside.

“People were breaking windows and fences of shops and cars,” said Mehmet Bock, 26, who has now returned to Antakya and is looking for a work colleague in the destroyed building.

On Saturday, German aid organizations suspended rescue operations in the earthquake area, citing security concerns and reports of clashes between groups of people and gunfire.

Turkish authorities have not commented on the unrest, but President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that the government will crack down hard on looters and other criminal activities, noting that a state of emergency has been declared.

The death toll in Turkey and Syria has topped 25,300.

Another rescue worker, Gizem, from the southeastern province of Sanlıurfa, said she also saw looters during her four days in Antakya.

“We cannot intervene as most of the marauders are armed with knives. Today they caught a looter, people chased him,” she said in the city, where there were many police and military who regulated traffic, helped rescuers and distributed food.

When she arrived, she described Antakya as a place of death and destruction. “We couldn’t hold back the tears,” she said as ambulance sirens wailed in the background.

“If people don’t die here under the rubble, they will die from injuries, if not, from infection. There is no toilet here. This is a big problem,” she said, adding that there were not enough bodies. bags for all the dead.

“The bodies are strewn across the roads, with only blankets on them.”

The townspeople wore masks to hide the smell of death.

Others expressed concerns about hygiene, especially the lack of working toilets.

There were long queues for the makeshift toilets, but many people said they were just finding a secluded spot, leading to complaints of stench.

“I think what is most needed right now is hygiene products. We have problems with the toilet, I’m afraid that some kind of disease will spread,” said one man, who declined to give his name and came from Antalya to help with rescue operations.

He said there was little coordination and everyone was doing their best to save lives, with some collapsed buildings still untouched in the alleys.

“We’ve been digging for hours,” he said, describing how a 56-year-old woman with a dusty face was pulled out of the rubble overnight and fell into the stairwell of an apartment building.

“We pulled out about 150-200 corpses.”

(Reporting by Ali Kukukgokmen; script by Daren Butler and Ezgi Erkoyun; editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

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