, has claimed that the official death toll from Monday’s massive earthquake doesn’t include scores of unidentified bodies, the Artı Gerçek news website reported on Thursday.){kind=link}
Ali Babacan, leader of the opposition Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), has claimed that the official death toll from Monday’s massive earthquake doesn’t include scores of unidentified bodies, the Artı Gerçek news website reported on Thursday.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which struck near the city of Gaziantep as people were sleeping on Monday, was followed by dozens of aftershocks, including a 7.5-magnitude temblor that jolted the region in the middle of search and rescue operations the same day.
The earthquake killed 12,873 people in Turkey and injured 62,937 more, according to the latest official figures.
DEVA leader Babacan, who on Wednesday visited the Antakya district of Hatay, one of the provinces that witnessed the greatest destruction in the powerful quake, made a statement to the press to share his observations of the area.
He claimed that the actual death toll from the earthquake is higher than the official figure since it doesn’t include the number of unidentified bodies.
“The number of those who lost their lives is only the number of those whose identities have been confirmed. … I regret to say that the [death toll] will rise and the pain will grow with every passing day,” Babacan said.
Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.
The country’s last 7.8-magnitude temblor was in 1939, when 33,000 died in eastern Erzincan province.
Turkey’s Marmara region suffered a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in 1999, leading to the death of more than 17,000 people.
Experts have long warned a large earthquake could devastate İstanbul, a megalopolis of 16 million people filled with rickety homes.