Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: Quake Death Toll Passes 15,000 in Turkey and Syria as Desperation Builds

The death toll from the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose as rescuers faced shortages of trucks, fuel and time. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited the area near the epicenter.

Follow our latest coverage of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

Ben Hubbard and Safak Timur

Two days after a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed more than 15,000 people in Turkey and Syria, families huddled in the cold rain, hitching tarps to make improvised tents, resting on bits of furniture pulled from the wreckage and lining up for shoes, blankets — anything available.

Many were angry that it was taking so long for rescue crews with heavy machinery to arrive. In Kahramanmaras, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited on Wednesday, three bodies were recovered from a six-story building and there were at least six more victims in the rubble. “The volunteers were here, but not the state,” said a relative of two of the victims.

Buildings fell across streets all across southern Turkey, rendering them impassible, and a fire station in Pazarcik was turned into a makeshift funeral home. Cracks in the walls of buildings that still stood were wide enough to reach through. Broken glass litters the ground, threatening to slash the feet of survivors, many of whom are shoeless and still in the sleeping clothes they wore when the quake struck two days ago.

Here are key developments:

The death toll in Turkey has passed 12,000, according to Turkey disaster management agency, the state Andalou News Agency reported early Thursday. In total, 12,391 people have died and 62,914 have been injured, according to the agency, known by its Turkish initials as AFAD.

Mr. Erdogan, Turkey’s paramount politician for 20 years, made his first visit to the disaster zone on Wednesday to tell his people how much his government had already done to help, while urging that citizens “show patience” as more aid made its way to them. But the leader of the country’s largest opposition party rejected a call for unity, saying that Mr. Erdogan was “fully responsible.” Criticism of the government’s disaster response would only add to headwinds for Mr. Erdogan’s quest for re-election in May.

Syria’s more than decade-long civil war is complicating efforts to get aid to the country. Many refugees displaced by the fighting live in the quake-stricken area of Turkey, and while aid was not crossing into Syria, bodies were.

The humanitarian crisis has prompted Turks around the world to rally together and raise money and gather supplies to send home. Their efforts ranged from a bake sale in London to the gathering of donations at a nursing home in Berlin.

In Turkey, Mr. Erdogan said rescue missions will focus on some of the hardest-hit provinces in Turkey: Hatay, Adiyaman and Kahramanmaras. In Syria, where more than a decade of civil war had already created a humanitarian crisis, at least 3,042 people died in the quake, according to the state Health Ministry and the White Helmets relief group.

Nimet Kirac

Antakya’s ancient old town has entirely collapsed. The old bazaar has turned into rubble. The Ulu Mosque, which dates back centuries, is now shaved to the ground. The old parliament building in the main square is no longer standing.

Scores of people are trying to access food and blankets. Some find it in the tents set up by the Turkish Red Crescent, but many are hopeless. They can’t leave the rubble they know their relatives are under but they are out of food and need sleep and supplies. “Where is the government?” the survivors were asking unanimously in front of one rubble in Defne neighborhood.

The Protestant church in old town is also gone. The buildings that remain are in horrible condition. The stray dogs are anxiously following the survivors, also seeking food.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria early Monday. Centered near Gaziantep in southern Turkey, the quake was felt as far away as Lebanon and Israel.

Severe

Moderate

Shake intensity

Black Sea

Ankara

TURKEY

7.5-magnitude

aftershock

7.8-magnitude

initial quake

Gaziantep

CYPRUS

Beirut

SYRIA

LEBANON

Damascus

Tel Aviv

IRAQ

JORDAN

ISRAEL

200 miles

Severe

Moderate

Shake intensity

Istanbul

Black Sea

Ankara

TURKEY

7.5-magnitude

aftershock

7.8-magnitude

initial quake

Gaziantep

IRAN

CYPRUS

Beirut

SYRIA

Mediterranean Sea

LEBANON

Damascus

Tel Aviv

JORDAN

IRAQ

Area of

detail

ISRAEL

200 miles

Severe

Moderate

Shake intensity

Istanbul

Black Sea

Ankara

TURKEY

Light

7.5-magnitude

aftershock

Moderate

Strong

7.8-magnitude

initial quake

Gaziantep

Severe

shaking

IRAN

CYPRUS

Beirut

SYRIA

Mediterranean Sea

LEBANON

Damascus

Tel Aviv

JORDAN

IRAQ

Area of

detail

ISRAEL

200 miles

Note: Based on assessment as of 8:00 a.m. E.S.T. on Feb. 6.

Source: U.S. Geological Survey

By Pablo Robles

Farnaz Fassihi

Three days after an earthquake devastated war-ravaged Syria, the United Nations said on Wednesday that very little aid had trickled to government-held areas and that it had been unable to send a single convoy of aid to opposition-held territory.

Nearly 11 million people in Syria have been affected by the earthquake, according to the United Nations. And four million of them rely on aid agencies for basic humanitarian needs like clean water and food.

“This is a big catastrophe,” El-Mostafa Benlamlih, the organization’s resident coordinator for Syria, said in a video briefing with reporters on Wednesday. “We are struggling, our humanitarian work is affected.”

The organization’s stock of humanitarian aid in Syria will run out in the next few days, Mr. Benlamlih said. The World Food Program has enough food in the country to feed 100,000 people for one week, he added.

A host of problems contribute to the slow international response in Syria, beyond damaged roads. The United Nations and aid agencies have to negotiate access with the government of Bashar Al-Assad and rely on the U.N. Security Council’s authority for cross-border access to opposition held areas.

Sanctions are another challenge, said Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bassam Sabbagh. So far a handful of countries have sent aid planes to Syria, he said, among them Iran, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Pakistan.

In Aleppo, a city of more than a million people, 30,000 are taking shelter in schools and mosques and about 70,000 are on the streets, Mr. Benlamlih said.

And while waves of international search and rescue teams, armed with life-detecting dogs, are pouring into Turkey, local volunteers are the only ones searching through Syria’s mounts of rubble and debris.

Syria Civil Defense — the volunteer group better known as the White Helmets — has said in videos that residents are digging for survivors and bodies of loved ones through the ruins with their bare hands.

Even the United Nations’ specialized natural disaster assessment team were still on their way to Syria on Wednesday, said Farhan Haq, the spokesman for the organization.

The disproportiante response in Turkey and Syria has to do with “the ability of people to mobilize in one country compared to the other,” Mr. Haq said.

The United Nations already has about 700 staff members based in Syria and across the border in Turkey, and for now it has relied on stocks — food, medicine, emergency kits — in Syrian warehouses, Mr. Haq said. But it has not yet been able to replenish those goods.

While those kinds of supplies are typically needed in the aftermath of disasters, Syria is also facing a dire shortage of fuel and generators, as well as heavy machinery for rescue operations and parts to repair ambulances and trucks, the United Nations said.

A number of thorny and complicated questions will determine the extent and the speed of relief to Syrians who are facing a crisis that has been magnified by the earthquake. Will Syria’s government allow humanitarian convoys to cross into opposition territory? Will the opposition accept aid from Syria’s government and its allies? And will international donors be willing to funnel millions of dollars of aid through Mr. Assad’s government and organizations affiliated with the government?

“We are hoping that everybody puts the interest of the people first, we keep the politics aside and all authorities move away from politics and put the interest of people first,” Muhannad Hadi, the United Nations’ regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, told reporters.

Other aid agencies on the ground in Syria are also scrambling to meet the spike in demand. Doctors Without Borders said its teams had provided medical items and kits to 23 local hospitals and clinics in northern Idlib Province, near the epicenter, and treated over 3,400 injured people.

The organization said many hospitals in northwestern Syria had been too badly damaged to operate, and patients were stranded. Two maternity clinics operated by Doctors Without Borders were evacuated because of the risk of buildings collapsing from structural damage.

“The massive consequences of this disaster will require an equally massive international response,” Avril Benoit, the organization’s executive director in the United States, said in a statement.

Anushka Patil

Survivors in Harem, Syria, described waking up and trying to evacuate when the earthquake struck in the middle of the night. “The building, the floors, the homes — they were collapsing on top of people,” one woman explained.

Anushka Patil

A mother and two children were rescued in the province of Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the earthquake, 64 hours after it struck, the Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

Anushka Patil

The whereabouts of Christian Atsu, a professional soccer player for the Turkish club Hatayspor, remained unknown on Wednesday, club officials said, despite their earlier statements that he had been rescued from the rubble of the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria and was receiving medical treatment.

It was unclear whether Mr. Atsu, a Ghanaian national, was still trapped underneath the rubble in Hatay Province, Turkey, or whether he had been removed but could not be located in the region’s overwhelmed hospitals. Hatay was one of the hardest-hit areas and had one of the highest death tolls from the earthquake.

Mustafa Ozat, the team’s vice president, said the information he had been given when he told a radio station on Tuesday that Mr. Atsu had been rescued was wrong.

“I had received information that Christian Atsu was removed from the rubble. However, the information received at the moment is that Atsu and our director Taner Savut are under the rubble,” Mr. Ozat told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet on Wednesday.

Ghana’s ambassador to Turkey, Francisca Ashietey-Odunton, told the Ghanaian media outlet Joy Sports on Wednesday that the Turkish foreign ministry was still searching for Mr. Atsu in medical facilities, illustrating how difficult it has become to communicate or verify information amid the earthquake’s destruction.

Ms. Ashietey-Odunton was in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and could not travel to Hatay herself because of road and airport closures, she said.

Mr. Atsu, a member of Ghana’s World Cup team in 2014, has spent the bulk of his career with European clubs, including Porto, Chelsea and Newcastle United. He joined Hatayspor last year. In the hours before the earthquake hit, Mr. Atsu had scored a winning goal for Hatayspor in its match against a team from Istanbul. The fate of Hatayspor’s other players remains unclear, and its manager, Volkan Demirel, has made public pleas for aid.

“I thought the day of judgment had come. I immediately thought of my players,” Mr. Demirel told Hurriyet about the moment the earthquake hit.

“May God not cause such pain to anyone,” he added.

Seda Ozturk contributed translation.

Farnaz Fassihi

The United Nations said at least 10 Palestinian refugees living in Syria have died as a result of the quake. There are nearly a half-million Palestinian refugees in Syria, with about 62,000 living in camps in the northern part of the country affected by the earthquake. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has requested $2.7 million in aid from the international community to respond to the earthquake relief need.

Anushka Patil

A 36-year-old woman, who survived nearly three days underneath rubble, was rescued in the province of Gaziantep, the Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

Raja Abdulrahim and Matina Stevis-Gridneff

The European Union will work with the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to get aid to both opposition- and government-controlled areas of Syria, an E.U. official said Wednesday, after Syria’s government lodged a formal request for aid with the bloc two days after a catastrophic earthquake.

The bloc, a major donor of humanitarian aid to Syria, said it was committed to helping Syrians despite the fact that it has placed the authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad, and some sectors of the Syrian economy under strict sanctions.

“Sanctions do not prohibit the export of food, medicines or medical equipment to Syria,” said Balazs Ujvari, a spokesman for the European Commission, adding that E.U. sanctions were designed with exceptions for humanitarian aid in mind. “The E.U. is committed to avoid, and where unavoidable to mitigate, any negative unintended impact of sanctions,” Mr. Ujvari said. “The EU’s number one priority is to save lives” in both Syria and Turkey, he added.

The Turkish government requested European help almost immediately after the earthquake, and the first E.U. crews landed in Turkey on Monday afternoon. The Syrian government’s request, two days later, focused on in-kind aid.

The Syrian Red Crescent and Syrian officials have called for a lifting of Western sanctions, which they said were obstructing aid deliveries to Syria — a claim that the E.U. rejected.

“It’s the time after the earthquake to lift the sanctions,” Khaled Hboubati, the head of the Red Crescent in Syria, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We want equipment. We need fire trucks. We don’t have heavy equipment for evacuation,” he added.

Monday’s earthquake affected a large swath of Syria’s northwest, including areas controlled by the Syrian government and opposition forces backed by Turkey.

Sanctions have been in place on Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government for years, imposed over its violent response to anti-government protests, and its subsequent actions, including the use of chemical weapons, in Syria’s civil war. Much of the international aid to Syria from the United Nations and other agencies flows through the capital, Damascus, which the government controls.

But when aid is sent via Damascus, the Syrian government is able to then limit what goes to opposition-held areas, because U.N. agencies must get permission to then deliver some of the aid across front lines, to opposition-held areas. Many U.N. requests for permission have been rejected by the Syrian government over the years.

“Given the record of oppression of Syrian people by the Assad regime, we would need sufficient safeguards in place to ensure that the aid provided through the E.U. civil-protection mechanism would reach the people in need,” Mr. Ujvari, the E.U. spokesman said.

In order to bypass these restrictions, the U.N. Security Council in 2014 approved a resolution to let U.N. agencies deliver aid to opposition-held areas across borders with neighboring countries, like Turkey.

Mr. al-Assad’s government and Russia, its close ally, have in the past opposed efforts to send aid directly to those areas from Turkey, contending that all aid should go through Damascus. Since the earthquake, they have reiterated that position.

The United Nations said it was hoping to send aid convoys to northwest Syria on Thursday through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, which the U.N. had previously said was not functioning because of damage from the quake in the area.

“Our trucks are ready, we have trucks at the border, we have trucks being loaded. We are just waiting for the logistics to be ready,” said Muhannad Hadi, U.N.’s Syria regional coordinator.

Ms. Ujvari, the E.U. official, said that the crossing was set to open again, citing information from the U.N.

“Of course it would help to have as many border-crossings open as possible so as to assistance can reach the affected people in Syria,” he said.

The bulk of international aid to Syria comes via U.N. agencies, which sent $2.13 billion to Syria last year, according to their figures. Since the earthquake struck, some countries friendly with the Syrian government have sent aid to Damascus. Iran, for example, sent a plane on Monday night with 70 tons of food, tents and medicine.

But of the billions in humanitarian aid sent to Syria last year, some of the biggest donors were countries that have imposed sanctions on Mr. al-Assad’s government. Despite those sanctions, the United States gave $964 million; Germany gave $536 million; and the European Union as a body gave $119 million.

Even as Syrian officials have called for aid, they have warned about resources falling into the hands of extremist groups, a longstanding refrain of the government.

This week, a Syrian member of Parliament urged people not to donate money to organizations working in opposition-controlled areas, arguing that the money could end up with terrorist groups — a claim that raised alarm among aid workers.

Idlib Province, in northwestern Syria, is mostly controlled by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former Al Qaeda affiliate that broke ties with the group years ago. But for over a decade, the government has commonly referred to all opposition — armed or peaceful — as terrorists.

Syria’s opposition-controlled northwest corner, which includes Idlib, is also home to some 4.2 million people, 2.7 million of them internally displaced from their homes in other parts of the country and many of them living in tent camps.

Syrian aid workers said they worried about the warnings of Syrian government officials.

“Instead of having a message of unity that this is a crisis that affects all Syrians, they are saying, ‘Be careful that no aid goes to those people, because they are terrorists,’” said Monzer al-Salal, the executive director of Stabilization Support Unit, an aid group that works in opposition-held areas.

“Calls for the lifting of sanctions is political,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the humanitarian situation.”

Farnaz Fassihi and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

Gülsin Harman

Officials from Twitter and the Turkish government met, the state Anadolu News Agency reported, after the social network was blocked in Turkey. Omer Fatih Sayan, the Turkish deputy minister of transportation and infrastructure, reminded senior Twitter officials of “Twitter’s responsibility in fighting disinformation,” Anadolu reported, while experts said the Turkish government was likely responsible for the Twitter outage.

Anushka Patil

The White Helmets relief group, which operates in areas of Syria outside of government control, have revised the number of deaths in northwestern Syria to at least 1,730. That brings the death toll of the disaster across Syria and Turkey to more than 12,000.

Anushka Patil

The death toll in northwestern Syria has risen to more than 1,400, the White Helmets relief group said, bringing the number of deaths across the country to at least 2,662.

The New York Times

Thousands of lives have been lost, and the death toll is expected to keep rising. Many more people are in need of urgent medical help. Hundreds of thousands, left without homes, must shelter from the freezing cold.

Monday’s deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria and powerful aftershocks have caused a humanitarian crisis. Dozens of countries are sending aid and rescue teams to the region.

Photo and video journalists have been documenting the destruction and the recovery efforts.

Anushka Patil

Volunteers with the White Helmets, the civil defense and rescue organization that operates in areas of Syria outside of government control, pulled the body one of its own members, Mahmoud Sharif, from under the rubble of his house, the group wrote on Twitter. Three other volunteers and some of their family members were also among those killed by the earthquake.

Few days ago he was one of the rescuers providing help. Now he is a victim. Heartbreaking scenes for White Helmets volunteers retrieving their colleague’s body out from under the debris after his home collapsed in the #earthquake. Rest in peace Mahmoud Sharif.#Syria pic.twitter.com/9NLHR8yQbT

Ben Hubbard

In Kahramanmaras, not far from where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Wednesday during his first visit to the earthquake-stricken region in southern Turkey, hundreds of displaced families sought shelter in a sports center that had been turned into an aid distribution point.

Inside, families huddled together on thin mats and spread blankets on the basketball court. Outside, they lit fires with salvaged wood to try to keep warm while workers served hot lentil soup in paper bowls.

Some complained that aid, including water, food, blankets and warm winter clothing, had been slow to arrive and that it was unclear how it was distributed.

The neighborhood is one of the most damaged by the earthquake. For blocks and blocks, apartment buildings had entirely collapsed, their rubble spilling across parts of the street and blocking access.

Three days after the quake, work crews and relatives of the missing were still frantically searching for survivors — or bodies of those who were not found in time. Excavators scooped away concrete, men with blowtorches cut through metal bars, and fires, built from salvaged wood, burned in the street where people struggled to keep warm.

Many were angry that it had taken so long for rescue crews with heavy machinery to arrive. Murat Ercan, 50, said his parents had been trapped in their building when it collapsed. Relatives of other people trapped in the building had managed to bring an excavator on Monday to start digging.

Teams from the government’s rescue agency came by three times to check the area, he said, but never came back to help dig because they believed that there were no survivors. In the meantime, Mr. Ercan had managed to unearth his parents’ heads, but had no way dig up the rest of their bodies, he said.

“There are definitely not enough rescue teams,” he said.

Anushka Patil

American search and rescue teams with medics, engineers, trained dogs and specialized equipment have now arrived in Turkey, according to Samantha Power, the USAID administrator. The deployment of the teams, who have responded to earthquakes around the world, was announced on Monday.

Gülsin Harman

Asked about reports of Turkish residents having problems accessing Twitter, which an internet-monitoring group suggested may have been the result of a government order, Vice President Fuat Oktay attributed those difficulties to “some technical problems” during a news conference about relief efforts.

Gülsin Harman

About 103,800 national personnel for disaster relief are in the earthquake zone, Turkey's vice president, Fuat Oktay, said in a news conference in the country’s emergency agency AFAD headquarters in Ankara. He said evacuation efforts were underway to relocate survivors to neighboring cities.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff

The European Union intends to direct emergency aid to regime-controlled and rebel-controlled areas of Syria through the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, an official with knowledge of the situation said. The bloc has extensive sanctions against Bashar Al Assad’s regime.

Jenny Gross

A fire at the Port of Iskenderun in southern Turkey, where heavy damage from the earthquake and the blaze have halted operations, was extinguished on Wednesday after burning for two days, the Turkish government said.

“It was brought under control by intervention from sea, land and air,” Turkey’s Directorate of Maritime Affairs wrote on Twitter. “Ship handling services are not available at this port, and waiting ships should head to other facilities.”

Efforts to secure the site have continued after the fire, which had broken out among containers at the Mediterranean port, about 60 miles southwest of the quake’s epicenter, said Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul. Firefighters from the Istanbul Fire Department had traveled to the scene for backup.

The damage at the port could further complicate Turkey’s recovery efforts after the earthquake. The port ranked the 10th largest in Europe in 2021, as measured by gross weight of goods handled, excluding Britain, according to European Union statistics. A.P. Moller-Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, said in a statement on Tuesday night that the port would remain closed as teams assess the damage.

“We will unfortunately not be able to deliver cargo currently on the water bound for the Port of Iskenderun,” the Danish company said in an advisory on Wednesday.

Damage to roads and infrastructure caused by the earthquake have made it difficult to get the necessary supplies to people who need them as rescuers face a shortage of trucks and fuel.

Jan Hoffman, the head of trade logistics at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva, said that the Port of Iskenderun was not among Turkey’s top five ports in terms of container ships and that other ports were more significant.

“It’s not at the core of Turkish connectivity,” he said. Still, he added, it is one of the closest ports to some of the areas that were hardest hit by the earthquake, so it is bad news for recovery efforts and getting supplies to the area.

Operations at all other Turkish ports were unaffected by the earthquake, the Turkish Directorate of Maritime Affairs said.

Maersk, which is based in Copenhagen, said in the statement that it was developing contingency plans involving the Port of Mersin and Port Said to minimize impact on customers and their supply chains.

Georgios Hatzimanolis of Marine Traffic, a maritime analytics provider, said he was seeing ships rerouted away from Iskenderun to alternative ports.

“Given its strategic importance and the fact that it can handle a range of ship types, including general cargo vessels, containership, tankers and livestock carriers, the closure of Iskenderun over the next few months will have a direct impact on trade in that part of Turkey,” he said. Since the beginning of the year, more than 850 vessels have arrived at that port.

Jason Karaian

The Istanbul stock exchange has suspended trading through Tuesday as steep declines in major market indexes have added financial turmoil to the economic hardship Turkey is already facing after Monday’s powerful earthquake.

The announcement on Wednesday by Borsa Istanbul, the exchange operator, came a few hours after trading was halted when the market’s so-called circuit breakers were set off, which has happened periodically since the quake. When a daily decline in stocks crosses a certain threshold, trading is paused to avoid further volatility.

The exchange cited an “increase in the volatility and extraordinary price movements after the earthquake disaster” as justifying the move, which included canceling all trades during Wednesday’s shortened session.

The country’s benchmark stock index fell 7 percent in early trading on Wednesday before the suspension, deepening losses from the previous day. The market has fallen more than 20 percent from its peak in early January, the common definition of a bear market, a rare phenomenon that typically accompanies a recession.

The Turkish lira hit a record low value against the dollar this week, another blow for a currency already under pressure, as Turkey’s unorthodox economic policy has fueled steep inflation, with prices rising at annual rate of nearly 60 percent, according to the latest data.

The trading suspension has echoes of 1999, when Turkish stocks were suspended for a week after an earthquake struck the northwestern city of Izmit, killing more than 17,000 people. The World Bank estimated that the economic hit was worth 2.5 percent of gross domestic product, with Swiss Re noting that only 5 percent of the multibillion-dollar losses were insured, with more than 150,000 buildings damaged or destroyed.

Nearly seven million people in Turkey, a country of 85 million, hold securities, including stocks, bonds and mutual funds, according to the central securities depository. That has more than doubled over the past year, with many people starting to trade stocks as inflation eroded the value of holding cash.

But the market remains relatively small compared with the size of the economy. The World Bank estimates that the value of public companies in Turkey is worth about a third of gross domestic product, similar to Mexico and Poland, but far smaller than Britain or the United States, according to the latest estimate available.

Safak Timur

In the relentless cold of Kahramanmaras, families gathered by fires waiting beside piles of rubble for loved ones to be uncovered, whether dead or alive. But for two bodies, there was no one. Rescuers uncovered them earlier the day, wrapped them in mint and pinkish grey patterned sheets and left them on the grass median to be picked up and taken to a morgue. No one at the scene knew where the family of the dead were, or whether their relatives were still alive.

Gulsin Harman

Two days after the earthquake – and months before a general election set for May – Turkey’s political opposition firmly rejected a call for unity on Wednesday by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s largest opposition party, put the blame on Erdogan’s 21-year rule.

Gulsin Harman

“There is one person fully responsible for all this, Erdogan,” Kilicdaroglu said in a video posted on Twitter. “Whenever Erdogan brings this country down, he makes calls for unity. Spare me. I have nothing to do with you.”

Halkımızın halini yerinde gördüm. Yaşananlara siyaset üstü bakmayı, iktidarla hizalanmayı reddediyorum. Bu çöküş tam da sistematik rant siyasetinin sonucudur. Erdoğan’la, sarayıyla ve rant çeteleriyle hiçbir zeminde buluşmayacağım. Ben halkımın kavgasını vereceğim. Sonuna kadar. pic.twitter.com/MMDeBCBFRC

Farnaz Fassihi

The United Nations said it hoped to send aid truck convoys to northwestern Syria from Turkey on Thursday through Bab al-Hawa border crossing, which had been closed after the surrounding roads had been damaged by the earthquake.

Farnaz Fassihi

Before the earthquake, the United Nations said, about 500 trucks of U.N. aid crossed the border into Syria each month. “We have trucks at the border, we have trucks being loaded. We are just waiting for the logistics to be ready,” said Muhannad Hadi, the regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria Crisis.

Isabella Kwai

LONDON — They had classes to attend and dissertations to write. But the students from Turkey at University College London were at a bake sale on Wednesday instead, unable to focus on anything but rousing financial support for earthquake victims back home.

“You feel so guilty because you are under your warm roof in a warm house,” said Eda Yildirimkaya, 20, who helped coordinate the effort and said she has barely slept since the disaster happened. “We can’t just do nothing about it.”

Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake in southern Turkey has spurred Britain’s Turkish diaspora into action as the climbing death toll and spotty communications have many fearing the worst for their loved ones.

About 82,000 people born in Turkey live in the United Kingdom, according to government data from 2021. Shaken by the disaster’s impact, community leaders are appealing for donations and businesses are canvassing their customers.

At the campus bake sale, Ozan Remzi, 21, was in an excruciating limbo, waiting to hear if three of his family members who were missing in the devastated city of Antakya were still alive. He said other relatives were trying to listen to the rubble of the missing loved ones’ building to see if they could hear voices.

“It just pains you to hear,” he said, adding that the uncertainty meant his family could neither give up hope nor start the grieving process.

The group, which had raised almost 7,000 pounds to donate to humanitarian efforts in Turkey by Wednesday and planned to host more donation drives, had become Mr. Remzi’s support system. “We’re all away from our families,” the engineering student said.

Turkish community groups were also gathering supplied to send directly to hard-hit areas.

Atilla Ustun spent the last two mornings driving vans full of donated winter jackets, blankets and baby clothes to a cargo drop at London Heathrow Airport.

“It is upsetting because you’re so far away,” said Mr. Ustun, a spokesman for the British Turkish Association who lives in Luton, a town about 20 miles north of London. “Any sort of bad news coming from your home country if you are far away — you seem a little bit helpless at first.”

Mr. Ustun’s group put out the call on Facebook for clothes, food, bedding, portable power banks and heaters. Residents of Luton had managed to scramble together about 25,000 pounds in cash donations over the past few days, and collected at least 10 tons of clothes and other goods to ship to hard-hit areas.

“When there are such certain things, war and disaster, people get together,” said Mr. Ustun. His family lives far from the epicenter and is safe, but he has friends who haven’t been able to reach loved ones in quake zone.

“We try to do our best in a time of crisis like this,” he said, adding that it was important to do whatever they could to help. “Being a part of a big tragedy, we’re all a big part of the picture itself.”

Gülsin Harman

The death toll in Turkey increased to 9,057, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Hatay.

Farnaz Fassihi

The World Food Program said it has enough food in Syria to feed people for one week.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff

The Syrian government has asked the European Union for emergency assistance in the aftermath of the earthquake. Although Bashar al Assad’s regime is under E.U. sanctions, a senior E.U. official in charge of coordinating the aid said that should not hamper the the delivery of humanitarian aid and emergency assistance to the Syrian people.

Isabella Kwai

Turkish students were raising money Wednesday with a bake sale at University College London, where the mood was somber but determined. Some had lost family members in the quake. Others were waiting for still waiting for news of missing loved ones. “You feel so guilty because you are under your warm roof in a warm house,” said Eda Yildirimkaya, 20. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

Aurelien Breeden

France is sending a field hospital to help Turkey cope with the aftermath of the earthquake, the country’s interior minister said on Wednesday.

Aurelien Breeden

The minister, Gérald Darmanin, said on Twitter that the field hospital was “specially designed for this kind of situation” and would be staffed by 81 emergency workers, including French firefighters.

Face à la situation dramatique en Turquie, à la demande @EmmanuelMacron, la France va engager l'ESCRIM, hôpital de campagne de sécurité civile, spécialement conçu pour ce type de situation, en complément des 136 sauveteurs déjà sur le terrain (1/2) @MinColonna

Aurelien Breeden

“This commitment will be made within the European framework, thus increasing France’s commitment and meeting the needs of the disaster victims,” Darmanin said.

Erika Solomon

BERLIN — For a third day in a row, the street was blocked outside a nursing home for Turkish-speaking residents in Berlin on Wednesday, filled with people on lunch breaks frantically packing sweaters into boxes, and students unloading trucks they had filled with baby formula and diapers.

Staff members at the nursing home were also trying to find out about their loved ones and reach those who survived. The families of two of the employees were feared dead, still lost under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

“I think that’s why so many of us come here, why we are so frantically helping — this is the only thing you can do to distract from the worst thoughts when facing so much grief,” said Kübra Ergün-Bektas, a staff member at the nursing home.

Around the world, Turkish and Syrian diaspora communities have been mobilizing to help the quake’s victims in their homelands. But perhaps nowhere are the intermingled sensations of desperation and determination as palpable as on the streets of immigrant neighborhoods in Germany, which is home to the world’s largest Turkish diaspora.

Since 2015, the country has also become home to nearly one million Syrians who fled the civil war in their country, including Qusay Eyyas, 23, who had taken a day off work on Wednesday to help drive truckloads of goods from the nursing home to the airport.

He knows the aid he helps deliver is unlikely to reach to his homeland, where civil war has complicated the arrival of goods. Areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s government are subject to Western sanctions, and crossings into opposition-held areas rely on goods entering from neighboring Turkey, where the roads have been severely damaged by the quake.

“It is so hard, knowing that Syria, a place that does not seem to be spared any tragedy, will not get all it needs,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I had to do something. I have to help someone, anyone, if I can.”

Outside Dosteli, the Berlin nursing home, as soon as the event’s organizer, Melek Erkut, had cleared the street of boxes, new crowds of people carrying plastic bags laden with goods had arrived within minutes, and the rush to pack boxes started again.

Ms. Erkut had been organizing the support since shortly after the earthquake occurred on Monday morning. “Within two hours, I had 500 people out here packing stuff with me,” said the organizer, whose family is from an area that was slightly affected by the quake. “By afternoon, there were more than 1,000.”

Volunteers organized the goods, helped tape up boxes and unloaded a carful of phone-charging banks that she thought might help people frantic to reach their loved ones abroad from quake-stricken regions with little electricity.

Wednesday was scheduled to be the last day the nursing home would collect aid. On Thursday, it is set to revert to its usual routine, Ms. Erkut said, and volunteers and aid will be sent to formal charities.

But Ms. Ergün-Bektas grinned upon hearing that.

“I have my doubts,” she said. “That is what she said yesterday, and the day before. But then we show up here in the morning, and the whole road is filled up again.”

Vivian Yee

On the mountainside heights overlooking the smashed city of Antakya, dozens of people in winter jackets huddled around a white van parked at what used to be a scenic viewpoint. Unlike other places offering aid, it was giving out not food, water, diapers or blankets, but an equally precious commodity in the disaster’s aftermath: power for people’s cell phones.

Vivian Yee

There was no electricity available — not to mention little food, water or gas — in the ruined city, blocking people from keeping in touch with relatives and friends and hearing the latest news. Which explained the masses thumbing their phones here: Cables snaked in several directions from the humming van, then branched into thickets of power strips with phone chargers plugged in.

Adam Satariano

Twitter was blocked on several networks inside Turkey, according to NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages — taking out a key communication channel for coordinating relief efforts after Monday’s devastating earthquake.

Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks, said Wednesday that the coordinated nature of the block suggested that it was likely the result of a government order. He said network data indicated that the block was being done with software installed by telecommunications providers that can prevent specific websites and services from loading.

NetBlocks later said that by Thursday morning network activity appeared to show that access to Twitter had been restored.

Turkey has a history of imposing social media restrictions during emergencies and major safety incidents.

In October, Turkey’s Parliament passed sweeping legislation in an effort to crack down on disinformation. As part of the measure, social media companies must remove content and provide proprietary information to the authorities if requested to do so. Companies that do not comply could face a slowdown in the speed of their services in Turkey.

Asked about reports of problems accessing Twitter, Vice President Fuat Oktay attributed those difficulties to “some technical problems” during a news conference about relief efforts.

Officials from Twitter and the Turkish government met later, Anadolu News Agency, the state news service, reported. Omer Fatih Sayan, the Turkish deputy minister of transportation and infrastructure, reminded senior Twitter officials “Twitter’s responsibility in fighting disinformation,” Anadolu reported.

Gulsin Harman contributed reporting.

Jason Karaian

The Turkish stock exchange has suspended trading through next Tuesday, announcing a prolonged pause after it indefinitely halted trades earlier today, triggered by another large drop in the market.

Jason Karaian

The exchange operator cited the “increase in the volatility and extraordinary price movements after the earthquake disaster” in making the move, which includes canceling all trades during the shortened session this morning. This would “ensure the reliable, transparent, efficient, stable, fair and competitive functioning of the markets,” it said.

Farnaz Fassihi

The earthquake has affected 10.9 million people inside Syria, both in government- and opposition-controlled territory, the United Nations said.

Farnaz Fassihi

In the city of Aleppo, 30,000 people are taking shelter in mosques and schools, and an estimated 70,000 are on the streets without shelter, said the U.N.’s chief resident humanitarian coordinator in Syria, El-Mostafa Benlamlih.

Farnaz Fassihi

“We are struggling,” he said. “Our humanitarian work has been affected.” He said water reservoirs have collapsed or are at risk of collapsing.

Adam Satariano

Twitter has been blocked on several networks inside Turkey, according to NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages, taking out a key communication channel for coordinating relief efforts.

Adam Satariano

Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks, said the coordinated nature of the block meant that it was likely the result of a government order. He said network data indicated the block was being done with software installed by telecommunications providers that can prevent specific websites and services from loading.

Adam Satariano

Turkey has a history of imposing social media restrictions during emergencies and major safety incidents.

Safak Timur

On the outskirts of Kahramanmaras, the city in Turkey that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited on Wednesday, hundreds of quake survivors, predominantly men, lined up to buy gas.

Safak Timur

Gas is scarce. Demand is high as people spent the freezing night in their cars, which they have to keep running in order to heat.

Ben Hubbard

In Pazarcik, a town in Turkey near the epicenter of the earthquake, many of the streets are impassible because of collapsed buildings. Windows throughout the city are broken and even buildings that appear solid are empty, as shaken residents have fled.

Ben Hubbard

“Pazarcik is over,” said Hasan Uzunkodalak, 60, who sells textile goods. “Who is the state supposed to help?”

Ben Hubbard

His modest, two-story house had a crack in the front wall large enough to reach a hand through. His business, too, had been destroyed, and he had no idea how he’d recover.

Ben Hubbard

“I used to have a business, now it is gone. I used to have a house to take shelter in, it is gone, too,” he said. “My life is over.”

Vivian Yee

Toward Antakya, Turkey, everything on the road wore a look of disarray. Things leaned at crazy angles: road signs, electricity poles, buildings. A pink house had collapsed sideways, the clothesline strung across the balcony on the second floor still pinned with laundry, only now it was drying at a 45-degree angle. People stood by the roadside next to their overstuffed suitcases.

Vivian Yee

Along the road, aid groups were handing out cardboard boxes of supplies (bread, diapers, clothes, shoes) to the newly homeless. In the town of Büyükdalyan, two young brothers were so excited to get shoes that they ran with them to show their mother.

Gulsin Harman

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited the southern region devastated by the earthquake on Wednesday, surveying the damage and trying to reassure the population there that the situation was under control, even as he acknowledged that rescue efforts had been hampered by damaged roads and airports.

“We are face to face with a great disaster,” he said, one day after declaring a state of emergency in 10 provinces that were hardest hit by the quake early Monday.

In Kahramanmaras, a city near the epicenter, Mr. Erdogan met survivors sheltering in white tents that had been set up on the field of a sports stadium. He said that families would be each given 10,000 liras (about $530) to cope with the natural disaster at a time when the country is struggling with economic turmoil and a huge spike in inflation last year.

In the period just before the earthquake struck, Mr. Erdogan’s government had been spending billions of dollars in state funds to bolster his standing in the run-up to a pivotal election, expected in May, in which his political fate is far from certain.

Speaking to the earthquake survivors, the Turkish leader acknowledged that rescue efforts had been hindered by infrastructure problems in airports and blocked roads, but he insisted that “all the institutions of the state are at work” in the relief efforts.

“Of course, the first day we had some discomforts,” he said. “Second day, then today, the situation got under control,” he added, “We will not go through again what we went through” during those initial days, Mr. Erdogan said, his voice slightly cracking.

He said that anyone who was not comfortable in the stadium’s tents could be moved to hotels in neighboring cities.

The president was also expected to visit other hard-hit areas in the south where search-and-rescue efforts are underway.

Erin Mendell

Gonul Tol was sleeping on a sofa in an apartment in southern Turkey when the earthquake hit early Monday and sent her crashing into a dresser on the other side of the room.

“It was so strong that initially I thought that I was in a dream,” said Dr. Tol, the founding director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, who has contributed Opinion pieces to The New York Times and written a book about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

She was in Mersin, a city on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, to see family after a trip to Istanbul for a meeting. Her sister and 4-year-old niece had traveled to see her, while her brother-in-law stayed home in Antakya, which would become one of the worst-hit parts of Turkey.

Dr. Tol, an expert on Turkish politics, described her harrowing experience Wednesday morning from an airport as she was headed home to Washington. The typically quiet airport was bustling with people who appeared to have suffered injuries, said Dr. Tol, who also said she saw people wearing what looked like Turkish uniforms disembarking from a plane.

In Mersin, the sisters wrapped the niece in a blanket and took the stairs to get outside, where it was cold and raining. Worried about their parents, whose building dates to the 1950s, they drove to their nearby home to find that their building had emptied onto the street. There, they sat in their father’s truck, where other people waiting in the rain joined them.

The family did not know how bad the conditions were in other parts of the country or that Ms. Tol’s sister’s home in Antakya had collapsed. At the time, they couldn’t reach her sister’s husband.

Several hours later, they took shelter in the neighborhood mosque, where the imam had turned on the heat, and began to learn the extent of the disaster.

They heard that roads were blocked but also that people were trapped in rubble. They decided to drive the truck to Antakya. Dr. Tol’s mother stayed with Dr. Tol’s niece in Mersin.

The drive took about twice as long as the usual two and a half to three hours because of heavy traffic. It was foggy and there were cracks in the road, but it was passable. Along the way, they saw buildings that had collapsed in the aftermath of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake.

In Antakya, they were reunited with Dr. Tol’s brother-in-law, but other family members were trapped under the rubble.

Among them was the brother-in-law’s father. His son heard him calling out and was able to pull him partway free. It was raining, so the family put an umbrella over him and gave him water to drink as they waited hours for help to arrive.

At one point, they thought their ordeal was about end. They saw rescue workers, but the crew said it had been ordered to work at another building and went on its way.

Before other rescue workers reached the scene, the father had died.

Sergey Ponomarev

Residents watched as rescue workers searched through the rubble in Iskenderun, Turkey, on Wednesday.

Natasha Frost

Okke Bouwman, a rescue worker for Save the Children, arrived in Gaziantep, Turkey, early this morning. “I can see quite a few collapsed buildings,” he said, noting that there were a lot of people out on the street in the cold.

Natasha Frost

“There were children huddled around fires to try and stay warm, and a lot of people sleeping in their cars — entire families. The reason for that is that people are really afraid to go back into their homes.”

Vivian Yee

On the road that passes the coastal city of Iskanderun, Turkey, a small group of people huddled by the road with folding chairs and blankets, apparently camping in their cars. The reason was obvious: All the apartment blocks across the road showed large cracks across their facades, and paint had fallen off.

Gülsin Harman

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is visiting Kahramanmaras, a city near the epicenter of the earthquake. Turkish television showed him speaking to survivors in tents set up on the field of a stadium in the city.

Gülsin Harman

Erdogan makes his way to a table covered with microphones. “We are face to face with a great disaster,” he says. “Sadly, the dead is at 8,574.”

Gülsin Harman

“My citizens, my people have always patience. I am certain my nation will show patience again. The state, under AFAD’s coordination, works in all the cities.”

Gülsin Harman

A survivor shouts, “May Allah protect our state.” Erdogan replies, “Thank you.” A girl approaches him, “May I kiss your hand?”

Gülsin Harman

Erdogan has ended his news briefing, which was held at a stadium in the city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the earthquake.

Ben Hubbard and Safak Timur

PAZARCIK, Turkey — In the hard-hit town of Pazarcik, near the epicenter of the earthquake, the headquarters of the local fire brigade has been turned into a funeral home.

Scores of families from the surrounding area had driven in with the bodies of their loved ones to be washed for burial. Usually, that would happen at mosques, but there were too many bodies for them to handle, and some of them were damaged.

More than 200 bodies had arrived since Monday, including 49 that were brought in before noon on Wednesday. One extended family brought the bodies of six relatives — ages 15 to 90 — covered in blankets in the back of two pickup trucks.

As they waited to take the bodies inside, a wailing woman lifted the blankets to kiss the feet of her mother and father, both killed in the quake.

A man from another village walked by carrying the washed body of his nephew, wrapped in white cloth. He gently laid it in the back of a flatbed truck usually used for hauling firewood.

Six more bodies would follow before the family drove back to their village to start digging graves.

Niki Kitsantonis

Greece is sending a second team of rescue workers to help with Turkey’s earthquake response, the Greek Civil Protection Ministry said on Wednesday. A C-130 transport aircraft is to leave Thessaloniki on Wednesday carrying 15 members of the Greek fire service’s disaster response unit, as well as rescue vehicles, medics and civil engineers, the ministry said.

Jason Karaian

Trading at Turkey’s main stock exchange was halted again on Wednesday morning as a series of sharp declines triggered so-called circuit breakers, which are designed to calm markets during periods of high volatility.

Jason Karaian

The suspension, announced by the Istanbul exchange, came as the country’s benchmark stock index fell 7 percent, adding to severe losses recorded since the earthquake.

Jason Karaian

The index has fallen more than 20 percent from its peak in early January, adding financial turmoil to the broader economic hardship already facing the country. The exchange did not say when trading would resume.

Erin Mendell

At Adana airport, people with injuries appeared to be traveling, said Gonul Tol, who was heading home to Washington. She said people who appered to be wearing Turkish military uniforms were getting off a plane.

Raja Abdulrahim and Muhammad Haj Kadour

In the first days after Monday’s earthquake, no humanitarian aid was entering northwestern Syria. Only victims’ bodies.

They arrived in the back of a van, wrapped in body bags, blue tarps or colorful family blankets. Their names were scrawled on pieces of paper for bereaved family members waiting in the bitter cold to receive them on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey.

The dead had once fled the airstrikes and collapsed buildings during a civil war back home to live in safety in Turkey. This week they were pulled from the rubble of their new homes and repatriated through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between the two countries.

On Tuesday there were 85 Syrian bodies. On Wednesday, dozens more followed.

“Those who didn’t die in Syria, died in Turkey,” said Ahmad al-Yousef, 37, as he waited Tuesday night on the Syrian side of Bab al-Hawa with his aunt to receive the body of a cousin’s 13-year-old daughter.

The body of the girl, Yara Ibnayat, had been unearthed from the ruins of their home in Turkey that day. Both of her parents and a brother were still under the rubble.

“Those who died, we want them to come back,” said Mr. al-Yousef, who lives in a tent camp near the Syrian town of Sarmada on the border. “We want them to be buried among their family.”

His cousin and his family fled their small village in Syria’s Hama Province in 2013 when shelling and airstrikes intensified, moving to another part of Syria closer to the border with Turkey. Soon after, they crossed over to Turkey because Yara’s father could not find work in Syria.

Now, she was returning.

Over 12 years of a civil war that has still not ended, nearly four million Syrians fled to the relative safety of neighboring Turkey. Millions more sought refuge in Jordan, Lebanon and Europe.

The Bab al-Hawa crossing is the only one approved by the United Nations for transporting international aid into opposition-held areas of northwestern Syria, where there was an overwhelming humanitarian need even before the earthquake struck. It is also used by other aid groups.

No humanitarian aid from Turkey to Syria had been able to get through the crossing in the first couple days after Monday’s earthquake, in part because the surrounding roads were damaged and aid groups in Turkey had also been affected by the quake.

On Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Damascus said that roads to the border crossing were open and that the first aid convoy to Syria from Turkey was expected to arrive in the coming hours.

By Wednesday night, it still appeared that no aid had made it into Syria.

“Right now all we are doing is receiving the bodies of our people who died in Turkey so that they can be buried back in their homeland,” said Mazen Alloush, the head of the Bab al-Hawa media office.

All through Tuesday and Wednesday, people from across northwestern Syria converged at Bab al-Hawa after receiving word from relatives in Turkey that the body of a loved one was being returned to Syria. They came in S.U.V.s and pickup trucks to collect their dead and transport them to their final resting place.

Muslim funeral prayers were being held constantly across northwestern Syria, sometimes in the shadow of mounds of rubble as rescue workers continued a desperate search and recovery operation.

On Tuesday afternoon a crowd of men had formed at the crossing in the bitter cold. They all stood apart, faces drawn. No one spoke.

When the van pulled up, the men surged forward, running, and crowded around the back of the vehicle. A border worker began calling out the names of the dead.

“Ahlam,” he called out.

“Go identify your sister’s body,” one man in the crowd urged another.

But Ahlam’s brother could not bear to see her like that.

“I can’t,” the man said. “I have a memory of my sister’s face in my mind. I don’t want that mental image of her face to be changed.”

His companion was forced to identify Ahlam instead, and they carried her body to their S.U.V. and left to go bury her.

Ever since Syrians began fleeing the war to neighboring countries, many have been returned upon their deaths through border crossings like Bab al-Hawa to be buried in their hometowns, according to the wishes of the dead or their families.

Customarily, the Turkish Health Ministry sends the bodies in a hearse to the border crossing and hands them over to the administration on the Syrian side, Mr. Alloush said. They then take them in a van to the waiting family members.

For nearly two hours Mr. al-Yousef and his aunt waited at the crossing, experiencing a wave of disappointment each time new bodies arrived and their young relative was not among them.

Occasionally they retreated to sitting inside their vehicle to stay warm in the frigid night weather.

“Burying the dead is the most important thing,” Mr. al-Yousef said. “We need to honor the dead.”

They planned to bury Yara in a village cemetery near where her grandmother, Mr. al-Yousef’s aunt, lives. There, as in nearly every cemetery in northern Syria, a handful of grave plots are always dug and ready for the next dead, in a part of the country where death often came from the skies — and not from underground.

“Every cemetery always has 10 graves ready,” Mr. al-Yousef said.

But around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, a border crossing official announced that no more bodies would come that night.

Mr. al-Yousef and his aunt drove home, through villages and towns where other people’s family members were still lying under the rubble waiting to be rescued or recovered.

They planned to return the next day.

On Wednesday, they were informed that Yara’s body would be delayed in its return to Syria: They would wait to recover her parent’s bodies and that of her brother and return them together.

Raja Abdulrahim reported from Istanbul, and Muhammad Haj Kadour from Idlib, Syria.