Rescuers fight it out in quake-hit Turkiye-Syria as victim count crosses 8,000
Gaziantep (Turkiye) (AP): Thinly-stretched rescue teams worked through the night into Wednesday, pulling more bodies from the rubble of thousands of buildings downed in Turkiye and Syria by a catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 8,000, their grim task occasionally punctuated by the joy of finding someone still alive.
Turkiye's disaster management agency said the country's death toll had risen to 6,234 as more bodies had been recovered. Over 8,000 fatalities have been reported, including those from neighbouring Syria.
Amid calls for the government to send more help to the disaster zone, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to travel to town of Pazarcik, the epicenter of the quake, and to the worst-hit province of Hatay on Wednesday.
Turkiye now has some 60,000 aid personnel in the quake-hit zone, but with the devastation so widespread many are still waiting for help.
Nearly two days after the magnitude 7.8 quake struck southeastern Turkiye and northern Syria, rescuers pulled a three-year-old boy, Arif Kaan, from beneath the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a city not far from the epicenter.
With the boy's lower body trapped under slabs of concrete and twisted rebar, emergency crews lay a blanket over his torso to protect him from below-freezing temperatures as they carefully cut the debris away from him, mindful of the possibility of triggering another collapse.
The boy's father, Ertugrul Kisi, who himself had been rescued earlier, sobbed as his son was pulled free and loaded into an ambulance.
"For now, the name of hope in Kahramanmaras is Arif Kaan," a Turkish television reporter proclaimed as the dramatic rescue was broadcast to the country.
A few hours later, rescuers pulled 10-year-old Betul Edis from the rubble of her home in the city of Adiyaman. Amid applause from onlookers, her grandfather kissed her and spoke softly to her as she was loaded on an ambulance.
But such stories were few more than two days after Monday's pre-dawn earthquake, which hit a huge area and brought down thousands of buildings, with frigid temperatures and ongoing aftershocks complicating rescue efforts.
Search teams from more than two dozen countries joined the Turkish emergency personnel, and aid pledges poured in.
But with devastation spread multiple several cities and towns some isolated by Syria's ongoing conflict voices crying from within mounds of rubble fell silent, and despair grew from those still waiting for help.
In Syria, the shaking toppled thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region wracked by the country's 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.
On Monday afternoon in a northwestern Syrian town, residents found a crying newborn still connected by the umbilical cord to her deceased mother. The baby was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told The Associated Press.
Turkiye is home to millions of refugees from the war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country's last opposition-held enclave, where millions rely on humanitarian aid.
As many as 23 million people could be affected in the quake-hit region, according to Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization, who called it a "crisis on top of multiple crises."
Many survivors in Turkiye have had to sleep in cars, outside or in government shelters.
"We don't have a tent, we don't have a heating stove, we don't have anything. Our children are in bad shape. We are all getting wet under the rain and our kids are out in the cold," Aysan Kurt, 27, told the AP. "We did not die from hunger or the earthquake, but we will die freezing from the cold."
Erdogan said 13 million of the country's 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkiye, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, authorities said.
In Syria, aid efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war and the isolation of the rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russia-backed government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under Western sanctions linked to the war.
The United Nations said it was "exploring all avenues" to get supplies to the rebel-held northwest.
In addition to the thousands killed in Turkiye, another 37,011 have been injured.
The death toll in government-held areas of Syria has climbed to 812, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 1,020 people have died in the rebel-held northwest, according to volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets, with more than 2,300 injured.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkiye in 1999. (AP)
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Kerala HC sets aside Sabarimala airport land acquisition process
Kochi (PTI): The Kerala High Court has set aside crucial stages of the land acquisition process for the proposed Sabarimala greenfield airport, holding that the state failed to properly assess the minimum land actually required for the project.
On December 30, 2022, the state government issued an order granting sanction for the acquisition of 2,570 acres of land, comprising the Cheruvally Estate and an additional 307 acres located outside it.
Justice C Jayachandran, delivering the judgment on a writ petition filed by Ayana Charitable Trust (formerly Gospel for Asia) and its managing trustee Dr Siny Punnoose, ruled the decision-making process under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, was legally flawed.
The court, in its December 19 order, directed the state to restart the process by conducting a fresh social impact assessment limited to examining the minimum land requirement, followed by a fresh appraisal by the expert group and reconsideration by the government.
The petitioners had challenged several government actions, including the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) report, the expert committee appraisal, the state government order approving the acquisition, and the subsequent notification under Section 11 of the 2013 Act.
The land in question, mainly the Cheruvally Estate in Pathanamthitta district, is proposed to be acquired for building a new airport intended to serve Sabarimala pilgrims.
The court found that while the state is entitled to acquire land for public purposes, the law clearly mandates that only the "absolute bare minimum" extent of land required for a project can be acquired.
According to the court, this mandatory requirement under Sections 4(4)(d), 7(5)(b), and 8(1)(c) of the 2013 Act was not properly complied with.
Justice Jayachandran observed that the authorities had shown "manifest non-application of mind" in assessing how much land was genuinely necessary.
As a result, the SIA report, the Expert Committee report and the government order were declared invalid to the extent they failed to address this crucial requirement.
Since the Section 11 notification could only be issued after a valid completion of these steps, it too was quashed.
On the petitioners' allegation of fraud on power and colourable exercise of authority, the court did not give a final finding. It held that this issue is closely linked to determining the minimum land required and can only be examined after that exercise is properly completed.
Before concluding, the court suggested that for technically complex projects like airports, the state should include technical experts in the SIA team to ensure informed and lawful decision-making.
The writ petition was accordingly allowed, keeping other issues raised by the petitioners open for future consideration.
