9 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag has vowed to crack down on negligent home construction after earthquakes in the south of the country since Monday have toppled thousands of buildings.
“Our priority is to save the people trapped under the rubble. Then the judicial process will continue. Those who committed negligence will have to be held accountable,” the minister said in statements to the press reported by ‘Daily Sabah’.
The minister’s statements come on the same day that the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has announced that each family affected by the earthquakes will receive 10,000 Turkish liras (about 500 euros), while stating that Ankara will launch “operations mass housing projects” in the ten affected provinces.
“Our citizens should not worry. We will never allow them to stay on the street,” said the president, before insisting that the victims can stay in various hotels for now. “We have a significant room capacity (in hotels). If our citizens do not want to stay here in tents, we will find accommodation for them in hotels,” he promised.
The president has also emphasized that the authorities “have mobilized all resources” to deal with the consequences of the earthquakes, which have left more than 12,000 dead and 60,000 injured in Turkish territory. According to official data, more than thirteen million people have been affected by the earthquakes, which have also caused the collapse of almost 6,500 buildings.
For its part, the earthquake has left 1,262 dead and 2,285 injured in areas of Syria controlled by the authorities, according to data from the Syrian Ministry of Health, to which must be added more than 1,730 dead and 2,850 injured in areas controlled by the rebels in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo (northwest), according to the Syrian Civil Defense, known as ‘white helmets’, through its Twitter account.
