February 13, 2023 Over 36,000 dead from quake in Turkey and Syria

Last week’s catastrophic earthquake demonstrated how critical it is to get more humanitarian aid crossings into Syria, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday.

The single crossing from Turkey approved to transport UN aid, the Bab al-Hawa crossing, had been inaccessible for days after the earthquake.

Price said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia should forget politics and do what is right.

In response to news that Assad finally agreed to open two crossings into Syria, according to a new statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, Price said he hopes the Syrian president "is serious about this.”

"It hasn’t been only Russia that’s been opposed to this in the past," Price said. "If the regime is serious about this, and if the regime is willing to put those words into action, that would be a good thing for the Syrian people," he added.

As hope fades for survivors from last week's quake that devastated northwest Syria, a notebook found in the rubble recalls happier days.

On Monday, the humanitarian organization, The White Helmets, tweeted images that memorialized a time when the region wasn't ravaged by a decade-long civil war.  

In one entry, the author remembers celebrating Eid back home with friends and loved ones. Those moments of joy are fleeting ones. 

The author describes the joy of Eid as "if it was never-ending." 

The author writes of longing for what they call moments that have long been lost.

Eid now is no longer a day of laughter, but a day of tears and longing. 

Rescuers hope to find the author of the notebook.

Compounding devastation: For Syrians, the earthquake is just the latest in a decade-long series of tragedies. 

CNN reported, most of the casualties were in a region already struggling to rebuild vital infrastructure heavily damaged by aerial bombardment during the country’s civil war, which the UN estimates to have claimed the lives of at least 300,000 civilians since 2011. 

Half of northwestern Syria’s 4.6 million population had been forced out of their homes by the conflict, with 1.7 million now living in tents and refugee camps in the region, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. Last year, the agency reported 3.3 million Syrians in the area were food insecure. 

“It’s a crisis within a crisis,” says Leena Zahra, a Syrian American humanitarian worker focused on increasing mental health access to globally displaced people. “This tragedy will impact children, entire families, some that have been displaced over 20 times. It’s just going to be adding on to the psychological impact that they’ve already faced.”  

 The United Nations welcomed President Bashar al-Assad's decision on Monday to open "the two crossing points of Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra'ee from Türkiye to north-west Syria for an initial period of three months to allow for the timely delivery of humanitarian aid."

The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit rebel-held areas in northern and northwestern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition groups and the Syrian government.

Starting last Thursday, the UN was able to get the first aid convoy into Syria from Turkey since the earthquake struck, through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. Since then, additional UN aid convoys entered via the same border crossing. 

At least 1,362 children in Turkey were separated from their parents after a massive earthquake struck a week ago, according to the country's Minister of Family and Social Services Derya Yanik.

To date, 369 have been reunited with their families, the minister said. Another 792 children are in hospitals and 201 children are in "institutions affiliated with our ministry."

Yanik said that 291 of the children remain unidentified – and the first step is to figure out who they are so they can be reunited with any family members who are still alive.

CNN's Ziya Dikbaş and Gokce Katkici contributed to this post.

At least 19,300 earthquake victims are under treatment in hospitals in Turkey, according to Turkey's Health Ministry. 

They include 3,636 people who are in intensive care units, the ministry reported Monday. 

At least 8,851 patients had to have surgery, according to the ministry, and some of them are already discharged.

Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Monday and discussed the need for aid.

Syrian state media, SANA, reports they talked about "urgent" humanitarian needs following the earthquake. 

"The President also stressed the necessity for the international efforts to concentrate on reconstructing infrastructure in Syria as this issue is an urgent need for the stability of the Syrian people and the return of Syrian refugees to their cities and regions," SANA reported.

What the UN is saying: Griffiths said earlier Monday that the UN will help move aid from government-controlled regions in Syria to the rebel-held northwest of the country.

"We'll have assistance moving from here to the northwest. But the northwest is only one part of Syria as you know,” Griffiths said.

A total of 58 interagency UN trucks carrying aid have crossed into northwestern Syria through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing from Turkey since Thursday, according to information provided by UNOCHA spokesperson Madevi Sun-Suon.

Remember: The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and Assad's government, who is accused of killing his own people. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad says any aid it receives must go through the capital Damascus.

CNN’s Mostafa Salem, Celine Alkhaldi and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this post.

A 10-year-old girl named Ayca Ceplin was rescued alive Monday in the 185th hour of Turkey's earthquake, according to CNN's sister network CNN Turk.

Ayca was pulled from the rubble of the Ebrar apartment complex in Kahramanmaras, CNN Turk reported.  

Rescuers promised strawberry milk and a local pastry known as a poğaça to a young girl after she was pulled from the rubble during the 178th hour of rescue efforts in the Turkish city of Adiyaman.

In a video shared by Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Twitter on Monday, rescuers can be seen placing an oxygen mask on the young girl, named Hivay. 

Rescuers have worked tirelessly to pull children and adults from the rubble one week after the powerful earthquake struck southern Turkey and northwestern Syria. 

More than 36,000 people have died across both countries, according to authorities.

Seven days after the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, teams are still finding victims that are alive. 

A man was rescued in Hatay on Monday in the 183rd hour of Turkey's earthquake that struck 10 provinces on February 6.

State-run news agency Anadolu reported his name as Huseyin Berber.

The rescue operation took place at Mimar Sinan street of Antakya. Berber was immediately taken to a hospital, Anadolu reported.

Berber's rescue followed the discovery of a 13-year-old boy in Hatay.