Turkey has arrested around 200 people in connection to buildings that collapsed after catastrophic earthquakes devastated the region earlier this month.
As many as 626 people were “suspects” after buildings fully collapsed or were seriously damaged in the wake of the earthquakes. Some of the suspects died in the quake while police are still hunting for others.
On Saturday, Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said evidence had been collected at thousands of buildings.
More than 5,700 buildings in Turkey have collapsed, according to the country’s disaster agency, and questions have been asked about the integrity of structures in some areas of the affected regions.
“The thing that strikes mostly are the type of collapses – what we call the pancake collapse – which is the type of collapse that we engineers don’t like to see,” said Mustafa Erdik, a professor of earthquake engineering at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “In such collapses, it’s difficult – as you can see – and a very tragic to save lives. It makes the operation of the search and rescue teams very difficult.”
According to the latest figures, the number of people killed by the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria earlier this month has now passed 50,000.
In Turkey alone, 44,218 people died as a result of the earthquakes, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said on Friday, while the latest announced death toll in Syria was 5,914.
The UNDP said it estimated that the destruction has left 1.5 million people homeless, with 500,000 new homes needed.
