Bodies are piled up in stadiums or car parks for identification; coffins are being brought in and mass graves dug
t the Nurdağı cemetery in the Turkish province of Gaziantep, on the Syrian border, there will soon be no more room for the dead. The freshly dug graves are marked with blank headstones, with only pieces of ripped cloth gathered from the victims’ clothing to identify them. The frayed ends of the cloth blow slightly in the frigid air.
While awaiting the arrival of forensic doctors and prosecutors, the inhabitants of some cities in Turkey have piled bodies in stadiums or in car parks in order to give relatives an opportunity to quickly identify their loved ones before being issued a death certificate. In the Afrin district in north-east Syria, a cemetery has been extended with makeshift mass grave burial sites. In the southern Turkish city of Osmaniye, a cemetery ran out of space, while outside Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre of the quake, a makeshift graveyard overflowed with so many corpses that wooden planks and concrete blocks gathered from the debris had to serve as headstones.
Freshly dug graves are marked with blank headstones, with only pieces of cloth gathered from the victims’ clothing to identify them, at the Nurdağı cemetery.“The memories trickled back to when that entire town was destroyed, it felt like the same exact situation and it reminded me of my seven brothers who died in a building collapse after an airstrike hit our building,” he said.
Their rescue efforts continued throughout the week, slowed by a lack of machinery and assistance. Idlib remained largely closed off from the outside world until six trucks from the United Nations reached the province on Thursday, providing a lifeline of vital goods days after the quake. “We have enough food to last us for a little while,” he said. “But to keep warm, we have a little wood we’re burning just a few hours a day to last us as long as possible. Somehow we’ve been left to face this situation alone.”Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
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