Nine Brazilians and eight family members disembarked early this Sunday (12), at Galeão Air Force Base, in Rio de Janeiro, rescued from the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria last week. The Brazilian Air Force (FAB) plane landed at 2:35 am after just over 14 hours of flight time from Ankara, the Turkish capital.
According to information from Estadão, there are four children and 13 adults, including a pregnant woman. In addition to the Brazilians, three Syrians, two Turks, two Colombians and an Egyptian with Syrian citizenship were also brought to Brazil.
The passengers were received by officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and will be under the care of the bureaucratic procedures department. There is no information if they will definitely stay in Brazil or if they will return to Turkey.
According to estimates, the number of deaths caused by the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday (6) already exceeds 28,000. Authorities have so far confirmed 24,600 deaths in Turkey and more than 3,500 in Syria.
Those numbers are expected to grow and even double as rescue work progresses and the chances of finding survivors in the rubble dwindle, according to Martin Griffiths, UN humanitarian chief.
“It’s really hard to estimate very precisely because you have to get under the rubble, but I’m sure it’s going to be double or more,” he told Sky News.
In Turkey, the authorities try to organize the burials of the victims, using bulldozers to open the graves. In Aleppo, in northwest Syria, people carried bodies wrapped in sheets and blankets and placed them in mass graves.
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