The world continues to be shocked by the devastation in Turkey and Syria after the powerful earthquakes that struck their border on Monday and whose balance already amounts to 11,200 deaths in both countries.
(You can read: Double earthquakes? The rare phenomenon that would have occurred in Turkey and Syria)
In the midst of this tragedy, which is already classified as one of the deadliest earthquakes of this century, all sorts of testimonies from victims and survivors have been known. The most recent is the heartbreaking photograph of a father refusing to let go of the hand of his 15-year-old daughter who died under rubble in a Turkish city.
(Keep reading: Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: shocking aerial images of the catastrophe)
Is about Mesut Hancer. Her story was reported by the AFP news agency. In the photograph, the man, with a lost look, grabs the hand of Irmak, his 15-year-old daughter, who remains inert between two concrete slabs.
(You may be interested: Image of the Virgin Mary remains intact after the collapse of the cathedral in Turkey)
Dressed in an orange coat with reflective stripes, Mesut is shown sitting on the rubble holding the lifeless hand of his daughter, which is sticking out from under the huge concrete block that collapsed on her bed while she was sleeping.
The painful scene was captured by AFP photographer Adem Altan in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, where grief and anger are mixed at the lack of help for the victims of the earthquake. That city, the epicenter of the first devastating earthquake (7.8) that shook southern and southeastern Turkey on Monday, is just ruin and desolation.
“He never left the hand of his daughter Irmak, who died in Değem,” Altan wrote on his Twitter account.
(Also: Video: Bird songs alert people moments before earthquake in Turkey)
Sam Jones, journalist from Guardian Also present at the scene, he said that the noise of a mallet, used by a man to make his way through the rubble, was heard in the place where Hancer and Irmak were. But the father, even though a day had passed after the earthquake, remained there, next to the lifeless body of his daughter, perhaps aware that it will be the last time she will hold her hand.
And it is that this Tuesday neither aid nor supplies had yet arrived in Kahramanmaras, a city of more than a million inhabitants, located in the south of the Cappadocia region. There, as recorded by international news agencies, frustration and resentment towards the absent State accumulate.
(You can read: Some 23 million people are at risk after the earthquake, according to the WHO)
Rescue teams in Turkey and Syria continue to rescue survivors trapped in the rubble on Wednesday against the clock. For two days and nights since the quake they worked in freezing temperatures to find survivors under collapsed buildings on both sides of the border.
The head of the Turkish Red Crescent, Kerem Kinik, warned that the first 72 hours were critical in the rescue efforts, but noted that they were hampered by “severe weather conditions.”
WILLIAM MORENO HERNANDEZ
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
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