The death toll from the earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey has risen to 41,156, the Turkish Disaster Management Agency (Afad) announced on Monday.
Search efforts have ended in many provinces, but are continuing in Kahramanmaraş and Hatay, in about 40 buildings, the same source said. On Sunday, Afad announced the cessation of search efforts for survivors in all regions, except the most affected provinces of Kahramanmaraş and Hatay, more than two weeks after the devastating earthquake of February 06.
The Turkish authorities have started, for their part, to build temporary housing in the regions of Nurdağı and Gaziantep, which will accommodate 19,000 people and will include 3,280 housing units.
International efforts are also continuing to alleviate the suffering of those affected, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced the departure of a ship from Italy carrying a first batch of 600 mobile homes on more than a thousand allocated by the alliance to help provide accommodation for around 4,000 people.
On Monday morning, the Qatari authorities also announced preparations to ship 1,400 mobile homes to Turkey via 6 ships. A violent earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale shook the district of Pazarcık in Kahramanmaraş, in the south of Turkey, on February 06, causing enormous damage in the localities of “Gaziantep”, “ Adana”, “Malatya”, “Diyarbakir”, “Sanliurfa” and “Osmaniye”, in addition to the epicenter.
A few hours after this first violent tremor, another earthquake struck north of the city of Gaziantep with almost the same intensity and near the epicenter of the first earthquake, which worsened the toll of the disaster.
Turkish authorities have declared official mourning for a period of seven days and a state of emergency in the disaster areas for three months.