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More than 5,000 victims- In a single city in southeast Turkey- of the devastating earthquake in Turkey were buried at a mass cemetery on Sunday.
This is even as the total death toll rose above 34,000, with chances of finding more survivors fade. In southern Turkey’s Antakya, shops were reportedly emptied by business owners who feared that looters will steal their merchandise.
The survivors as well as dead bodies continued to be pulled out of the rubble on Sunday, as authorities in Turkey tried to maintain order across the disaster zone and started legal action against builders over building collapses.
Aid workers and residents said that the security conditions in cities have worsened as collapsed homes and businesses are being robbed.
A senior official was quoted as saying that the Kahramanmaras’ mass burial ground will eventually become the resting place of the city’s 10,000 residents who died in the natural disaster. Another policeman, who led the burial operation, said that there has been a continuous increase in the number of dead bodies arriving “every day.
The streets of Kahramanmaras, where once 500,000 people stayed in their homes, have been completely levelled as rescuers continue to pull bodies from the debris of the collapsed buildings after multiple earthquakes rocked the city on Monday.
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The authorities have erected white makeshift tents on the edge of the cemetery where the bodies are being cleaned before they are buried in freshly-dug graves.
Mourners were seen crying and screaming cars and vans filled with bodies continued to come to the burial ground.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has decried the failure to provide desperately required aid to Syria’s war-torn regions, while also warning that the death toll of the earthquake to rise far higher.
A UN convoy filled with supplies was sent to northwest Syria through Turkey. But the agency’s relief chief Martin Griffiths said that a lot more aid was needed for millions who had lost their homes in the disaster.
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” said Griffiths on Twitter.
While assessing the damage suffered by southern Turkey on Saturday, Griffiths said that the figure is likely to “double or more” in the coming days.
