Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
SYRIA: International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday while rescuers toiled to pull children from the rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid.At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the United Nations said.Aftershocks following Monday's 7.8-magnitude temblor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors."When I see the destroyed buildings [and] the bodies, it's not that I can't see where I will be in two or three years. I can't imagine where I'll be tomorrow," said Fidan Turan, a pensioner in Turkey's southern city of Antakya, her eyes welling up."We've lost 60 of our extended family members," she added. "Sixty! What can I say? It's God's will."The UN's World Food Program appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 in Syria.Of those, 545,000 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees.The UN Human Rights Office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area — where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate — to allow humanitarian access.The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work.In rebel-held northwestern Syria, about 4 million people rely on humanitarian relief, but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks.The Syrian government said it had approved the delivery of humanitarian assistance to quake-hit areas outside its control.Only two aid convoys have crossed the border this week from Turkey, where authorities are engaged in an even bigger quake relief operation of their own.A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals and created shortages of electricity and water.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to authorize the opening of new cross-border humanitarian aid points between Turkey and Syria. The council will meet to discuss Syria, possibly early next week.Turkey said it was working on opening two new routes into rebel-held parts of Syria.The winter freeze has left thousands of people either spending nights in their cars or huddling around makeshift fires that have become ubiquitous across the quake-hit region.
Anger builds
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