Turkey-Syria Earthquake: Death Toll Tops 33,000

By Staff, Agencies

Rescuers pulled more survivors from the rubble on Sunday, nearly a week after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkey and Syria.

With chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries from Monday's earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 33,000 and looked set to keep growing. It was the deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939.

In a central district of one of the worst hit cities, Antakya in southern Turkey, business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.

Residents and aid workers who came from other cities cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.

In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the country’s northwest, leaving homeless yet again many people who had already been displaced several times by a decade-old war.

More than six days after the first quake struck, emergency workers still found a handful of people clinging to life in the wreckage of homes that had become tombs for many thousands.

The quake ranks as the world's sixth deadliest natural disaster this century, its death toll exceeding the 31,000 from a quake in neighboring Iran in 2003.