A massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked huge swathes of Turkey and parts of Syria on February 6, killing more than 50,000 people in both countries.
The World Health Organization said it was the “worst natural disaster” in the European region for a century.
One month on, Turkey is facing the daunting task of rebuilding flattened cities, with tens of thousands buried and many survivors barely subsisting in tents or containers.
Loss
The country’s death toll from the quake has risen to 45,968, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Saturday, with 4,267 of the dead Syrian refugees who fled the civil war in their country. Thousands more in Syria have died.
The earthquake struck 11 Turkish provinces at 4:17am local time as people slept in homes not built to withstand powerful tremors.
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Turkish officials said 214,000 buildings collapsed following the quake, many of them in Hatay and Kahramanmaras.
Teams of workers are still toiling to clear the rubble that now dominates quake-hit cities.
About 14 million people have been affected by the disaster — one sixth of the country’s population.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said to date 3.3 million people had been forced to leave the quake zone. More than 1.4 million have been resettled in tents and nearly 46,000 in container cities, while the rest have been settled in dormitories and guesthouses, according to official figures.
Frustration
There has been mounting frustration at the government over its handling of the disaster. Erdogan has blamed severe winter conditions that covered major roads in ice and snow, damaged roads and inoperable airports.
In some provinces, including Adiyaman, anger at the state remains strong. Survivors told AFP they had been left to save loved ones trapped under the rubble with their bare hands because there were no rescue teams, soldiers or police for days after the quake.