The balance sheet continues to rise, reassessed several times a day, in Turkey and Syria following Monday’s earthquakes. The bar of 20,000 deaths has now been crossed. In Kahramanmaras, in eastern Turkey, a city of 500,000 people near the epicenter, many bodies are still found in the debris of buildings.
With our special correspondents in Kahramanmaras, Jad El Khoury & Guilhem Delteil
Death is omnipresent here. At the foot of a collapsed building, men and women in tears. In front of them, four black bags are lying on the ground.
Four lifeless bodies that rescuers have just removed from the rubble. Quickly, the bags are loaded on board a van.
At Kahramanmara Main Cemeterysthe arrivals follow one another at a frantic pace and each vehicle contains several bodies.
Edger Bahcage came to bury his uncle.
It’s a huge pain. I do not know what to say. It’s indescribable. I have never seen anything like it. You can read the pain and fear in people’s eyes.
“It’s apocalyptic”
Under tents, employees clean the remains, wrap them in a white shroud and return them to the families. Funeral ceremonies are collective.
A dozen bodies are lying next to a freshly dug trench. An imam begins the prayer and then the remains are buried. But already, a bulldozer is digging a new trench: 30 other bodies are lying on the ground, ready to be buried.
A vision of the end of the world, for Delek Isik.
It’s apocalyptic. I don’t know what to think, what to say. I want to leave everything behind and start a new life. We have been through so many horrible things. I wish I had known how to appreciate everything I had. That’s the only lesson I learned.
►Read again: Earthquake in Turkey: in Kahramanmaras, the distress of families following the rescue operations