Turkey-Syria earthquakes death toll passes 6,000

The official responsible for properties belonging to the Roman Catholic Church across the Middle East said he would open all churches in northern Syria to people needing shelter after Monday's devastating earthquakes.

The office of Rev. Francesco Patton said the properties would be able to shelter hundreds of people and provide medical care and food to thousands, The Associated Press reported.

The devastating earthquakes along the Turkish-Syrian border struck an area that was already home to millions of refugees battling desperate circumstances. The United Nations said it was trying to reach refugees affected by the first quake, which registered a whopping magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale, though it stressed that its existing aid programs were woefully underfunded.

"We do not know the exact number of refugees impacted and we might not for some days, but we fear the number might be significant, given the epicenter of the quake was close to areas with high concentrations of refugees," said Matthew Saltmarsh, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.

Turkey hosts more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees who have fled their country's civil war, almost half of them children. In the 10 Turkish provinces affected by the quake, more than 1.7 million of the 15 million inhabitants are Syrian refugees.

Philippe Leclerc, UNHCR's representative in Turkey, said that in Kilis province, one in two people are Syrian refugees, while in Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Hatay, the figure is one in four or five.

"These 10 regions are also hosting the largest refugee population in the world," he said Tuesday.

Meanwhile within Syria, more than 6.8 million people were internally displaced before the quake, and nearly 60,000 Palestinian refugees were in quake-affected northern Syria. 

 The Los Angeles County Fire Department is among the local U.S. agencies sending a task force to Turkey to help with recovery efforts after the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake and powerful aftershocks on Monday, CBS Los Angeles reports. 

The agency said it was mobilizing California Task Force 2 in response to a request by Turkish leaders for help from abroad. The task force will provide immediate relief efforts, firefighters said. 

The team will include 81 people, six canine teams and three structural engineers, according to the department.

A navy ship docked Tuesday at the southern Turkish port of Iskenderun to transport quake survivors in need of urgent medical care to another city nearby, The Associated Press reported, as thick black smoke rose from another part of the busy port. 

Maritime intelligence news website Lloyd's List said international logistics giant AP Moller Maersk had rerouted all of its vessels slated to sail into Iskenderun as firefighters were still battling a huge blaze Tuesday at one of the port's cargo terminals. The fire erupted when one of Monday's major earthquakes toppled stacked shipping containers at the terminal.

Maersk said some of its logistics and transport infrastructure in the region, including at the Iskernderun port, had sustained "severe structural damage," forcing "a complete stop of all operations until further notice" at the Mediterranean Sea port.

"We will need to perform a change of destination for all bookings bound for the port or already on the water. We are currently planning to divert containers to nearby hubs within operational feasibility or hold at transhipment ports - including Port of Mersin [Turkey] and Port Said [Egypt]," Maersk said, according to the Reuters news agency.

"It's not yet known how long recovery efforts will take and when the port can undergo a full inspection of the damage," the shipper said.

The United Nations began mobilizing resources shortly after the earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday. 

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) had a total stock of some 2,000 tents and approximately 1,700 Non-Food Item kits pre-positioned inside northwest Syria. UNHCR said 1,000 additional tents were available in a warehouse in Gaziantep, southern Turkey. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) also released trauma kits from its warehouses to at least 16 hospitals in northwest Syria. The head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, tweeted that "emergency teams are on the ground."

"The earthquake has heavily impacted northwest Syria, where 4.1 million people, most of them women and children, were already relying on humanitarian assistance," Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General told reporters, adding that "hospitals are already overwhelmed."

The U.N. has more than 700 staff based in the earthquake-affected areas.

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh told reporters on Monday that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had "assured us that the U.N. will do all that's possible in helping Syria in this very difficult situation."

"Turkey and Syria need all the help they can get," said Mark Lowcock, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development and former U.N. relief chief. "The most vulnerable may be those in Syria in places not controlled by the government: help via Turkey may be needed for them, and diplomatic efforts are necessary to achieve that."  

Senior officials from the World Health Organization said that Turkey had strong capacity to respond to the devastation of Monday's earthquakes, which have killed, injured, and displaced thousands of people, but that the needs in Syria were more extreme.

"All over Syria, the needs are highest after nearly 12 years of protracted, complex crisis, while humanitarian funding continues to decline," Adelheid Marschang, WHO Senior Emergency Officer, said.

A pregnant woman who was trapped under the rubble of a building in Aleppo, Syria after it collapsed in Monday's earthquake gave birth to her baby before passing away, local activists said. Her child survived and was saved by rescue-workers, the activists said.

Read the full story here.

Hundreds of people flocked to Istanbul airport on Tuesday to try to journey to southern Turkey to join the relief efforts. Among them were rescue workers, members of non-governmental organization groups and civilians:

Large cracks have developed on a hydroelectric dam in Aleppo, Syria, a tweet from Syria TV shows:

Syria TV is a Turkey-based Syrian opposition channel.

Afrin, in rural Aleppo, is under the control of Turkish forces.

Syrian opposition groups fear that if the dam collapses, it would inundate the entire area, which would be disastrous for the thousands of displaced people living in nearby refugee camps.  

-- Khaled Wassef contributed reporting

The weather in Turkey and Syria is expected to get drier and sunnier this week but remain freezing after heavy rain and snow hit the areas hit hardest by Monday's earthquakes, CBS News partner network BBC News reports.

The temperature is expected to be around 43 degrees Fahrenheit during the day in Gaziantep, where the earthquake struck, and drop to around 19.5 degrees Fahrenheit at night.

In the villages and towns closer to the mountains, the temperature could fall as low as five degrees Fahrenheit.

In Syria, the temperature is expected to be around 50 degrees Fahrenheit by day and 26.6 degrees Fahrenheit by night, the BBC reported. 

Thirty-one-year-old professional soccer player Christain Atsu was pulled alive from under rubble, officials from his current team, Hatayspor, in Turkey, said Tuesday.

Atsu, who previously played in the Premier League for Everton and Newcastle United, joined Hatayspor in September and was selected for Ghana's international team in 2019.

"Christian Atsu was pulled out injured. Our sporting director, Taner Savut, is unfortunately still under the rubble," Hatayspor's Vice President Mustafa Ozat said, according to the Reuters news agency.

A video shared by the White Helmets, a Syrian volunteer organization that operates in opposition-held parts of the country, often rescuing people from bombed-out buildings, shows a young child being pulled from the rubble after Monday's devastating earthquakes and aftershocks.

Syria, which has been ravaged by a brutal civil war for years, is calling on the United Nations for  help with its rescue efforts. The area that was worst affected by the earthquake is split between government-held territory, controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and opposition-held territory, which borders Turkey and is surrounded by government forces.

Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Bassam Sabbagh, did not directly say whether other crossing points into the country from Turkey would be opened for aid deliveries. He said the government was ready to help deliver aid "to all Syrians in all territory of Syria," but said it must be coordinated through Damascus.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was "now a race against time" to rescue people trapped after yesterday's earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

"Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes," Tedros said.

The WHO boss said that rescue efforts were hampered by continued aftershocks, damage to infrastructure, and severe winter conditions.

"We are especially concerned about areas where we do not yet have information. Damage mapping is ongoing, to understand where we need to focus our attention," Tedros said.

He said the WHO was sending three charter flights to both Turkey and Syria with medical supplies, including surgical trauma kits.

"This is a moment when we must come together in solidarity, as one humanity, to save lives and alleviate the suffering of people who have already suffered so much," Tedros said.

Turkey's president, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Tuesday the death toll in his country had climbed to 3,549.

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said earlier that another 20,534 people had been injured.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed to 812 people, with some 1,450 injured, according to the Health Ministry.

In the nation's rebel-held northwest, the opposition's Syrian Civil Defense, or White Helmets, the paramedic group leading rescue operations, said at least 790 had been killed and more than 2,200 injured. Those numbers were expected to "rise dramatically," the Reuters news service quoted the White Helmets as saying.

-- The Associated Press contributed reporting

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that Monday's earthquakes and aftershocks in northeastern Turkey and northern Syria could affect as many as 23 million people, Agence France-Presse reports.

AFP says WHO senior emergencies officer Adelheid Marschang told the U.N. health agency's executive committee, "Event overview maps show that potentially 23 million people are exposed, including around five million vulnerable populations."