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Rabat – The damage caused by the devastating earthquakes in Turkiye will exceed $100 billion, Louisa Vinton of the United Nations Development Programme said on Tuesday.
The UN representative made her comments in a video conference from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which suffered severe damage from the quake. Vinton added that recovery costs “will obviously exceed that amount.”
The provisional figure will be mentioned at a major donor event on March 16 in Brussels, which aims to raise money for survivors and reconstruction.
Vinton described the scenes in Turkiye’s Hatay province, which was the worst hit by the catastrophe as “apocalyptic,” lamenting the scarcity of the resources required for an effective recovery and rebuilding process.
The World Bank had estimated the earthquakes’ damage at $34 billion, but said that recovery and reconstruction would add to the cost, as well as the resulting GDP loss for Turkiye.
Rebuilding with improved standards and erecting more resistant buildings will also increase the expected costs, Vinton added.
A catastrophic 7.8 earthquake struck southern Turkiye and northern Syria last month, resulting in more than 50,000 losing their lives and hundreds of thousands injured.
The quake was followed by several aftershocks over the following days, as rescue teams continued extracting survivors and deceased victims alike from underneath the rubble.
As a result, millions have been displaced from their homes and are staying in temporary accommodation such as tents and make-shift storage container houses.
Following the disaster, several countries and international organizations expressed support for Turkiye, helping in the search and rescue efforts.
Since the first earthquake struck, 20 deaths have been confirmed among Moroccans living in the country, according to the Moroccan embassy in Ankara.
