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GAZIANTEP, Turkey - The disastrous earthquake in Turkey inflicted sufferings upon the residents of Gaziantep’s Islahiye and Nurdagi towns, forcing them to spend around seven days on the streets and in need of urgent help as rescue teams continue their search for survivors.
The people of Gaziantep’s Islahiye town are left to fend for themselves with no shelter amid a winter freeze, compounding their struggles and making them resort to seeking urgent help.
Ferhat Celik, a victim, is forced to spend the night on the freezing streets alongside her children until the sun rises.
“On the first day of the earthquake, I went to rescue my son-in-law and nephews from the rubble with my own hands,” Celik told Rudaw’s Farhad Dolamani in Islahiye on Saturday. “I took five people out of a house and my childhood friend died in front of me.”
The town’s people are left without basic necessities and services, with some sleeping in their cars while many others survive the days and nights wandering around street corners.
“No one came to save us and we called the civil defense, but nothing. No one came to our aid for three and a half hours,” Ilham Tek said in the town of Nurdagi.
“Everything is over, we have nothing left here,” he lamented.
Humanitarian aid has yet to reach all the affected families nearly a week after Monday’s earthquake, and dozens of families are left homeless and without tents.
A disastrous 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the city of Kahramanmaras in southern Turkey on Monday dawn, with its impact also ripping through Syria.
At least 28,000 people have been killed in both countries as of Sunday morning, with UN aid chief Martin Griffiths warning that the tally is expected to double.
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