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ANTAKYA, TURKEY — Close to the epicenter of Monday’s devastating earthquake, a whole lot of our bodies lined the pavement of a car parking zone outdoors a hospital in Hatay Province. The makeshift, open-air morgue was a grim reminder of the human toll of the catastrophe.
Greater than 20,000 folks have died throughout Turkey and Syria, a quantity that’s anticipated to rise as search-and-rescue efforts shift to restoration operations.
The Hatay Coaching and Analysis Hospital is situated in one of many worst-hit areas and was severely broken, leaving an overwhelmed workers to course of a whole lot of our bodies left on the concrete, many with out identification.
Mehmet and Yusuf Ozdemir had been among the many a whole lot of households looking for the our bodies of their brother and his household on Wednesday.
One after one other, they opened and closed physique baggage, discouraged by the numerous rows of corpses.
“Family of the deceased, like us, don’t wish to unzip the physique baggage and see that horrible sight,” stated Mehmet. “This isn’t the way in which it needs to be.”
Their brother Ibrahim Ozdemir was killed alongside along with his spouse, Emine, and their two daughters, 1-year-old Emine and 3-year-old Necla, when the earthquake trapped the household within the rubble of their house constructing.
After greater than an hour of looking, Mehmet and Yusuf lastly discovered the our bodies of Ibrahim and his household. They moved them right into a car, getting down to a close-by cemetery to bury them.
As they drove, devastation surrounded them. The street to the cemetery, as soon as lined with high-rise house buildings, was now full of damaged concrete and limitless piles of particles.
Households huddled in tents close to the rubble of what was once their houses. Lots of them had been Syrian refugees who fled to southern Turkey to flee a brutal civil struggle, solely to search out themselves displaced but once more.
On the Fatikli Mosque, mourners prayed over the our bodies of the Ozdemir household. One other relative, who’s an imam on the mosque, led the burial ceremony.
Outdoors the mosque, a bunch of mourners dug 4 graves facet by facet, one for every member of the family.
Some wept quietly because the our bodies had been lowered into the bottom. Family sat solemnly on the pavement, observing the scene.
Ibrahim’s aunt Fatma Ozdemir cried out in the course of the burial. Different feminine mourners stated their last goodbyes, wiping mud from the recent graves into the chilly air.
Throughout Turkey and Syria, rescuers and volunteers are nonetheless combing via the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings, bracing for a lot of extra burials to return.
Sarah Kerr contributed extra video manufacturing.
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