ANKARA, March 13 — The death toll from powerful earthquakes that struck southern Turkiye last month has risen to 48,448, the country’s interior minister Suleyman Soylu said on Monday.
“6,660 of the dead were foreign nationals, and most of them are our Syrian brothers,” Soylu said at a news conference in quake-hit Malatya province along with Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.
Debris removal work continues, he said, adding that 10,000 of a total of 56,000 damaged buildings have now been demolished and their debris removed.
Anadolu Agency quoted Soylu as saying that Turkiye continues to meet the needs of housing for the quake victims.
He said that 21,000 containers were already set up and a total of 85,000 people are living there, adding that the country plans to set up 115,585 containers in the quake-hit region.
“The number of tents distributed and set up by the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), and NGOs so far is 433,536 and the number of tent cities is 354,” he added.
On February 6, the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck 11 provinces — Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Elazig, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa.
More than 13.5 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the devastating quakes, as well as many others in northern Syria.
— Bernama
