U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a trip to Turkey that Washington will support its ally “for as long as it takes” after earthquakes rocked the country two weeks ago.
The United States has sent a search and rescue team to Turkey, along with medical supplies, concrete-breaking machinery and additional funding of $85 million in humanitarian aid that also covers Syria.
Turkey stepped up work to clear away rubble from collapsed buildings on Monday, as rescue work wound down two weeks after the major earthquakes killed more than 46,000 people in southern Turkey and northwest Syria.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said that nearly 13,000 excavators, cranes, trucks and other industrial vehicles had been sent to the quake zone.
The death toll in Turkey had risen to 41,020, AFAD said, and it was expected to climb, with some 385,000 apartments in the country known to have been destroyed or seriously damaged and many people still missing.
Among the survivors of the Feb. 6 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria are about 356,000 pregnant women who urgently need access to reproductive health services, the U.N. sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA) said at the weekend.
The women include 226,000 in Turkey and 130,000 in Syria, about 38,800 of whom will deliver in the next month.
