A 20-year-old man allegedly killed a Flipkart delivery partner who came to deliver an iPhone at Karnataka’s Haasan district, reported The Hindu.
The accused stabbed the delivery person as he did not have money to pay for his order.
According to the report, Hemant Datta, the resident of Lakshmipuram in Haasan district’s Arsekere ordered an iPhone through Flipkart in the beginning of February. Hemanth Naik who works as a delivery agent with the e-commerce site came to the house of the accused on February 7 to deliver the phone. While delivering the phone, there was an argument over the payment and unboxing the mobile phone between the two and Datta allegedly stabbed Naik with a knife in his house. Police said that Naik died on spot and Datta had hidden the dead body in a gunny bag. Two days later, Datta threw the bag on a nearby railway track and later buried the body with petrol.
As the deceased went missing from February 7, his brother Manju Naik filed a police complaint with Arsekere police station. The police found the dead body at a railway track and the accused was arrested on Saturday. A case has been filed on the accused and police are investigating the matter further.
Against this backdrop, Green’s grief-stricken family has searched for answers to his killing — but three years later, those answers prove elusive. There was no evidence of angel dust involved, police investigators admitted. The struggle that allegedly prompted Owen to fire his weapon also could not be corroborated. Standing before the family and reporters at a press conference, Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski declared that he was unable to provide the community “with a reasonable explanation for the events that occurred.” (Owen was charged with second degree murder and his trial is still pending after prosecutors reportedly offered Owen a plea deal, which was then tossed following the family’s objections.)
There was one other fact that would complicate the narrative about Green’s killing, at least in the public eye: The officer and his victim were both Black. As Nikki Owens, a cousin of Green’s who now volunteers with the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability, sees it, that fact made it much more difficult to keep her relative’s name in the news — and rally the community to demand police accountability and reform. (In September 2020, the family reached a $20 million settlement with the county.)
Green’s killing bears a stark resemblance to the tragedy that befell Nichols, a 29-year Black man, almost exactly three years later. When the Memphis Police Department released video on Jan. 27 of five of its employees beating and brutalizing Nichols, who was unarmed, some in the punditariat seized on the occasion to point out that because the officers were Black, this could not possibly have been an instance of racism.
“Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, white racism is one commodity, like cedar boards, that’s getting harder to find,” Tucker Carlson blustered on his show the week after the video’s release.
“Where’s George Floyd when you need him?” he added, with his trademark glint of sarcasm. (The five officers in Nichols’ killing pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges on Friday.)
To Owens, whose father-in-law retired from the police force in 2006, these conceits are misguided but deeply ingrained in the American psyche — something she attributes in part to television narratives that glorify police. Even among some Black Americans, she says, there’s been a knee-jerk instinct to blame the victim. In a country where news of police brutality appears to have an expiration date, these dismissive bromides can often make a difference in the political response to these human calamities.
“Although we have a system built on racism, the fact that we have people working within our system and willing to enforce those racist policies, laws and procedures is our biggest problem,” she tells me.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rodríguez: Let’s start with you telling me a bit about your cousin William Green, who was killed by police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in January 2020. How have you been thinking of him in the aftermath of Tyre Nichols’s death?
Owens: William Green was not perfect. By no means — none of us are. But he was a good guy. He was one of my cousins that I was closest to — we talked every day, and if we didn’t talk, we texted every single day. He loved people. He loved celebrating. He loved get-togethers. He was just an overall great guy. He was the last person I would expect this to happen to. He loved his kids. He loved his mother. And he just loved all of us. When we were out and about together walking across the street, he held my hand like I was a two-year-old — that was just the type of person that he was. Every police shooting, police murder, regardless of the color of the victim, just brings back the pain because now we know another family has to deal with what we dealt with.
I have not watched the Tyre Nichols tape. I won’t watch the Tyre Nichols tape.
They were both unarmed men who did not present a danger to the police and they were murdered. That is the two similarities that draw my attention. The fact that they’re Black men? Yes, that is also a comparison. The fact that the officers that killed them were Black? We can compare that as well. But honestly the biggest thing is that I saw people online saying, “Well, if you don’t do the crime, then you won’t be harmed; don’t run.” My cousin didn’t run. My cousin complied and he still died.
Rodríguez: You’ve talked about the fact that as a society we are not educated enough in the realities of institutional and systemic racism, even though it’s ever-present in our culture. How do you see that cropping up either in William Green’s or Tyre Nichols’ killings? How has that reactivated conversations around systemic racism in your community?
Owens: Until we can get people to actually acknowledge that what these police officers are doing (whether the color of their skin is Black, brown, white) is racism, then it’s never going to change. The fact that people are not familiar with systemic racism, or the fact that they can watch it play out on video, on television, on the radio they can listen to it, they can see it, and still deny it, that’s our bigger problem. The history of policing is based on slave patrols — it’s racist, and they’ve continued those same racist practices. But people are so blinded by television’s version of police. They put these shows on, like “Cops,” that make it seem like police are out here serving the community, so that way you will ignore these incidents where these officers are actually out here harming citizens. It suits their narrative that cops are heroes. As long as people are benefiting off of it, it’s not going to change.
Rodríguez: Could you say more about how people benefit off of systemic racism in policing?
Owens: Policing is what feeds our judicial system. It feeds our courts, it feeds our prisons. It’s the starting point of racism within our judicial system. Then we have to deal with the court system, then we have to deal with jails. Policing puts us in a continual cycle of [fighting] racism: We have to try to go fight for bail; we get unfair bail; we get unfair sentencing; and then we go to these private prisons that have deals with our judicial system [to] make sure that you stay at this point of capacity. And then they work with corporations who use them for cheap labor. Policing is just the starting point of a whole system of racism that we’re trying to fight, and we’re fighting a losing battle at this point. To say it’s disheartening is not even a strong enough word when you look at how long we’ve been fighting, how hard we’ve been fighting — and how nothing’s really changed.
Rodríguez: Some commentators have latched onto the race of the officers who killed Nichols and used that to claim that this wasn’t an example of racism. How have Black folks in your community reacted to the killing, and do you feel like that argument has also been made within the Black community?
Owens: Black people will tell you the police system is racist. If we get pulled over with police lights behind us, we’re scared even if we know we didn’t do anything — we have a sense of dread. Do I think other ethnic groups would agree? Maybe not. It’s been talked about within Black communities for centuries.
There [was a] lawsuit against Wells Fargo in 2022 for discriminatory lending practices against Black people and people of color. Everybody was up in arms that Wells Fargo was a racist company. No one questioned the color of the people who were actually implementing those policies and enforcing those procedures. No one said, “Well, if the loan officer were Black, then that can’t be racism.” No one questioned the color of the workers actually implementing those practices. Same thing with the police. The police is a business. Even though it is a publicly funded agency, it is still a company, and they have racist practices, procedures and policies. And it doesn’t matter if the officers are white, Black, Asian — I don’t care what ethnic group that officer falls in. If they’re out here enforcing and applying racist processes, policies and procedures, it’s racism.
Because these officers were Black, [the killing] doesn’t get the same response as if the cop was white, because they’re looking at this as “Black-on-Black crime” and not racism. The Black community is angry because we know that they are wrong. We know that there’s no color line when it comes to doing this — it’s that thin blue line that they follow. They care more about the blue, that uniform, than they do about their own people.
But then we have our own people who sometimes have that same misunderstanding that because the cops are Black that this isn’t racism. So it’s very disheartening.
Rodríguez: How do you approach those conversations with those folks within the Black community? Where are they coming from?
Owens: I think that there are a lot of Black people who go with the flow. My way of describing these people is [having a] “slave mentality.” That’s my word. In their head, it’s still instilled in them that white people are superior — white people are smarter, white people are richer. There are still people in the Black community that have that mindset. These are the people who, when this happened, were like, “Well, what did he do?” instead of saying, “No, no, no, it makes absolutely no sense that five officers beat this man to that point. Absolutely no [way] — it was unnecessary.” If you knew you was about to get beat up, wouldn’t you try to run, too?
You can try to educate them, you can talk to them, but there’s just sometimes you can’t change people’s mind. Some things are just ingrained in people. I can tell them my opinion on it, but I can’t change their mind.
Rodríguez: Your father-in-law was a member of the police force in Colorado. Can you describe for me what his experience was like and what were some of the challenges that he had to face as a Black person in the police force?
Owens: When you’re Black or brown and you’re joining a racist institution, you are not immune to it. And my father-in-law was not immune to it. He had to deal with it. But he made a choice not to immerse himself so much in that racist environment that it changed who he was. He chose to do his job, but also do what was best for his community. He knew that what he was doing was right and so he didn’t fear retaliation. He loved doing his job. He loved what he did. But within the police department, yes, he had to endure racism. He didn’t take the attitude of “If you can’t beat them join them.” He just was true to himself.
There’s a lot of good people that join a police department and they want to be out there and help their communities — their goal is to help people.
I look at Michael Owen, the man who killed my cousin, as the “if you can’t beat them join them” type. He wanted to be looked at as one of the guys. He wanted to be accepted, even by the racist cops. Do I feel like he made a conscious choice to, instead of fighting that culture of racism, join in it? Yes, I do. I think he felt like because he was one of them, there would be no consequence.
Rodríguez: You said that until we acknowledge that policing in America as racist, it will sort of remain fundamentally broken. Is it possible to create a police force and a policing system that isn’t racist, if policing in America has that legacy of the slave patrols?
Owens: Here’s how I see it: You cannot have racism without people who are willing to enforce [racist practices] and be racist. So if we have people who are not willing to go out there and arrest people based on the color of their skin, if we have judges not willing to place unnecessarily high bails on people simply because of the color of their skin, if we don’t populate our jails [disproportionately] with Black people, then we wouldn’t have racism. Although we have a system built on racism, the fact that we have people working within our system and willing to enforce those racist policies, laws and procedures is our biggest problem. How do we get rid of racism within individuals? That’s the bigger question.
Rodríguez: You were talking about how the police system perpetuates racism and how it’s sort of irretrievably broken because of how much racism there is in it. And at the same time, I hear you talking about the experiences your father-in-law had to deal with. How do you hold those feelings side-by-side while pushing for police accountability?
Owens: I don’t have a hate for police officers. It’s a job. When they take off their uniform, these are fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, grandfathers — these are people. Their job is not who they are, it’s what they do. If you choose to go to work, and you choose to be terrible at your job, it’s not the fact that you are a policeman, but the fact that you are bad at your job. When you step outside your door in that uniform, and you know that you have to work in a community of primarily Black and brown individuals in low-income neighborhoods, do you go into that neighborhood with the mindset that these people are inherently violent, that they’re criminals? Is that the mindset that you have? That determines the type of person that they are and whether they should be doing that job. They’re humans. That’s it.
Rodríguez: You mentioned politicians, and I noticed that Gov. Wes Moore had put out a statement on the killing of Tyre Nichols. And he wasn’t yet the governor of Maryland when your cousin’s shooting happened. But what message do you have for him about still-unresolved cases like your cousin’s?
Owens: Wes Moore was in Maryland politics when my cousin was killed. What would I like to say to him? “Help us. You are historically in this office. Make a change. Don’t go with the flow.” Every politician in this country knows it’s a problem. The thing is, it’s unpopular. I don’t donate to politicians the way the Fraternal Order of Police does. A lot of these people, they’re not going to say anything because the Fraternal Order of Police writes them big checks.
To Wes Moore: You are historically in this position, so make history. Make a change. Try to fix what’s broken. Start here.
It has to start somewhere and it has to start with someone.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
ADANA, Turkey : Rescuers in Turkey and war-ravaged Syria searched through the frigid night into Tuesday, hoping to pull more survivors from the rubble after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 4,000 people and toppled thousands of buildings across a wide region.
Authorities feared the death toll from Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake and aftershocks would keep climbing as rescuers looked for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.
Survivors cried out for help from within mountains of debris as first responders contended with rain and snow. Seismic activity continued to rattle the region, including another jolt nearly as powerful as the initial quake. Workers carefully pulled away slabs of concrete and reached for bodies as desperate families waited for news of loved ones.
“My grandson is 1 1/2 years old. Please help them, please. … They were on the 12th floor,” Imran Bahur wept by her destroyed apartment building in the Turkish city of Adana on Monday.
Tens of thousands who were left homeless in Turkey and Syria faced a night in the cold. In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, a provincial capital about 33 kilometers (20 miles) from the epicenter, people took refuge in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared seven days of national mourning.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Erdogan to express condolences and offer assistance to the NATO ally. The White House said it was sending search-and-rescue teams to support Turkey’s efforts.
The quake, which was centered in Turkey’s southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents of Damascus and Beirut rushing into the street and was felt as far away as Cairo.
It piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade. On the Syrian side, the area is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the civil war.
In the rebel-held enclave, hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, the opposition emergency organization known as the White Helmets said in a statement. The area is packed with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the war. Many live in buildings that are already wrecked from military bombardments.
Strained medical centers quickly filled with injured people, rescue workers said. Some facilities had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organization.
More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured Monday’s quake at 7.8, with a depth of 18 kilometers (11 miles). Hours later, a 7.5 magnitude temblor, likely triggered by the first, struck more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.
The second jolt caused a multistory apartment building in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa to topple onto the street in a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, according to video of the scene.
Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria’s cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometers (200 miles) to the northeast.
In Turkey alone, more than 5,600 buildings were destroyed, authorities said. Hospitals were damaged, and one collapsed in the city of Iskenderun.
Bitterly cold temperatures could reduce the time frame that rescuers have to save trapped survivors, said Dr. Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University. The difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war would further complicate rescue efforts, he said.
Offers of help — from search-and-rescue teams to medical supplies and money — poured in from dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO. The vast majority were for Turkey, with a Russian and even an Israeli promise of help to the Syrian government, but it was not clear if any would go to the devastated rebel-held pocket in the northwest.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense described the situation in the enclave as “disastrous.”
The opposition-held area, centered on the province of Idlib, has been under siege for years, with frequent Russian and government airstrikes. The territory depends on a flow of aid from Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said 224 buildings in northwestern Syrian were destroyed and at least 325 were damaged, including aid warehouses. The U.N. had been assisting 2.7 million people each month via cross-border deliveries, which could now be disrupted.
At a hospital in Idlib, Osama Abdel Hamid said most of his neighbors died when their shared four-story building collapsed. As he fled with his wife and three children, a wooden door fell on them, shielding them from falling debris.
“God gave me a new lease on life,” he said.
In the small Syrian rebel-held town of Azmarin in the mountains by the Turkish border, the bodies of several dead children, wrapped in blankets, were brought to a hospital.
In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, and one could be seen lying on a stretcher on the snowy ground. Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk said a woman was pulled out alive in Gaziantep after a rescue dog detected her.
In Adana, 20 or so people, some in emergency rescue jackets, used power saws atop the concrete mountain of a collapsed building to open up space for any survivors to climb out or be rescued.
“I don’t have the strength anymore,” one survivor could be heard calling out from beneath the rubble of another building in Adana as rescue workers tried to reach him, said Muhammet Fatih Yavuz, a local resident.
In Diyarbakir, hundreds of rescue workers and civilians formed lines across a huge mound of wreckage, passing down broken concrete pieces and household belongings as they searched for trapped survivors.
At least 2,921 people were killed in 10 Turkish provinces, with nearly 16,000 injured, according to Turkish authorities. The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed to 656 people, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. In the country’s rebel-held northwest, groups that operate there said at least 450 people died, with many hundreds injured.
Huseyin Yayman, a legislator from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several of his family members were stuck under the rubble of their collapsed homes.
“There are so many other people who are also trapped,” he told HaberTurk television by phone. “There are so many buildings that have been damaged. People are on the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.”(AP)
“My grandson is 1 1/2 years old. Please help them, please. We can’t hear them or get any news from them since morning. Please, they were on the 12th floor,” Imran Bahur wept by her destroyed apartment building in the Turkish city of Adana. Her daughter and family were still not found.
Tens of thousands who were left homeless in Turkey and Syria faced a night in the cold. In Turkey’s Gaziantep, a provincial capital about 33 kilometers (20 miles) from the epicenter, people took refuge in shopping malls, stadiums and community centers. Mosques around the region were opened to provide shelter.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared seven days of national mourning.
The quake, which was centered on Turkey’s southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents of Damascus and Beirut rushing into the street and was felt as far away as Cairo.
The quake piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade. On the Syrian side, the area is divided between government-held territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the civil war.
In the rebel-held enclave, hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, the opposition emergency organization, called the White Helmets said in a statement. The area is packed with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the war. Many of them live in buildings that are already wrecked from past bombardments.
Strained health facilities quickly filled with injured, rescue workers said. Others had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organization.
More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured Monday’s quake at 7.8, with a depth of 18 kilometers (11 miles). Hours later, a 7.5 magnitude temblor struck more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.
The second jolt in the afternoon caused a multistory apartment building to topple face-forward onto the street in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa. The structure disintegrated into rubble and raised a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, according to video of the scene.
Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria’s cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometers (200 miles) to the northeast.
In Turkey alone, more than 5,600 buildings were destroyed, authorities said. Hospitals were damaged, and one collapsed in the Turkish city of Iskenderun.
Bitterly cold temperatures could reduce the time frame that rescuers have to save trapped survivors, said Dr. Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University. The difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war would further complicate rescue efforts, he said.
Offers of help — from search-and-rescue teams to medical supplies and money — poured in from dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO. The vast majority were for Turkey, with Russian and even an Israeli promise of help to the Syrian government, but it was not clear if any would go to the devastated rebel-held pocket in the northwest.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense described the situation in the enclave as “disastrous.”
The opposition-held area, centered on the province of Idlib, has been under siege for years, with frequent Russian and government airstrikes. The territory depends on a flow of aid from nearby Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.
At a hospital in Idlib, Osama Abdel Hamid said most of his neighbors died. He said their shared four-story building collapsed just as he, his wife and three children ran toward the exit. A wooden door fell on them and acted as a shield.
“God gave me a new lease on life,” he said.
In the small Syrian rebel-held town of Azmarin in the mountains by the Turkish border, the bodies of several dead children, wrapped in blankets, were brought to a hospital.
Television stations in Turkey aired screens split into four or five, showing live coverage from rescue efforts in the worst-hit provinces.
In the city of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, and one could be seen lying on a stretcher on the snowy ground. Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk said a woman was pulled out alive in Gaziantep after a rescue dog detected her.
In Adana, 20 or so people, some in emergency rescue jackets, used power saws atop the concrete mountain of a collapsed building to saw out space for any survivors to climb out or be rescued.
“I don’t have the strength anymore,” one survivor could be heard calling out from beneath the rubble of another building in Adana earlier in the day, as rescue workers tried to reach him, said a resident, journalism student Muhammet Fatih Yavuz.
In Diyarbakir, hundreds of rescue workers and civilians formed lines across a mountain of wreckage, passing down broken concrete pieces, household belongings and other debris as they searched for trapped survivors while excavators dug through the rubble below.
At least 2,316 people were killed in 10 Turkish provinces, with more than 13,000 injured, according to Turkish authorities. The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed to 656 people, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. In the country’s rebel-held northwest, groups that operate there said the death toll was at least 450, with many hundreds injured.
Huseyin Yayman, a legislator from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several of his family members were stuck under the rubble of their collapsed homes.
“There are so many other people who are also trapped,” he told HaberTurk television by phone. “There are so many buildings that have been damaged. People are on the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hailakandi: A 17-year-old girl allegedly died by suicide in Assam’s Cachar district after her family prevented her from going ahead with wedding plans with her lover, police said on Monday.
The incident occurred amid the state government’s crackdown on child marriage, which also led to the cancellation of several weddings of underage girls in Assam’s Barak Valley comprising Hailakandi, Cachar and Karimganj districts.
At least 2,441 people have been arrested in the state till Monday in the continuing operation against child marriage, launched on February 3.
In Dhalai area of Cachar district, a 17-year-old girl hanged herself on Saturday after her family refused her permission to marry her lover now, a police officer said.
“She had prepared to elope with her lover, but the family came to know about it and prevented her. There have been about 19 arrests in child marriage cases in neighbouring villages,” a relative of the girl said.
The number of arrests till Sunday evening was 243 in Barak Valley 80 in Cachar, 82 in Hailakandi 82 and 81 in Karimganj.
A number of people have cancelled scheduled weddings since the drive started, according to owners of wedding halls owners.
One such wedding was called off in Srimantakanishail village in Karimganj as the bride will be completing 18 years in two months.
“When the bride’s family brought this point up, both the families decided to postpone the wedding till the girl attains the legal age for marriage,” the owner of a wedding hall said.
The MLA of Sonia constituency in Cachar district, Karim Uddin Barbhuiya, urged Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to exempt those married for many years from police action.
In a statement, he said families are being disrupted and the future of the children of such families is at stake.
Barbhuiya urged the chief minister to stop harassing the poor and weaker sections of the society’ in this drive against child marriage.
The state cabinet had recently approved a proposal to book men who have married girls below 14 years of age under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Cases under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 will be registered against those who have married girls in the age group of 14-18 years, the cabinet decided.
The offenders will be arrested and the marriages declared illegal.
Assam has a high rate of maternal and infant mortality, with child marriage being the primary cause, according to reports by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
Rescue workers and residents in multiple cities searched for survivors, working through tangles of metal and concrete. A hospital in Turkey collapsed, and patients, including newborns, were evacuated from facilities in Syria.
In the Turkish city of Adana, one resident said three buildings near his home were toppled. “I don’t have the strength anymore,” one survivor could be heard calling out from beneath the rubble as rescue workers tried to reach him, said the resident, journalism student Muhammet Fatih Yavuz.
“Because the debris removal efforts are continuing in many buildings in the earthquake zone, we do not know how high the number of dead and injured will rise,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “Hopefully, we will leave these disastrous days behind us in unity and solidarity as a country and a nation.”
The quake, which was centered on Turkey’s southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, was felt as far away as Cairo. It sent residents of Damascus rushing into the street, and jolted awake people in their beds in Beirut.
It struck a region that has been shaped on both sides of the border by more than a decade of civil war in Syria. On the Syrian side, the swath affected is divided between government-held territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from that conflict.
The opposition-held regions in Syria are packed with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the fighting. Many of them live in buildings that are already wrecked from past bombardments. Hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, the opposition emergency organization, called the White Helmets, said in a statement.
Strained health facilities and hospitals were quickly filled with injured, rescue workers said. Others had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organization.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in a similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured Monday’s quake at 7.8. Hours later, a 7.5 magnitude one struck more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away. An official from Turkey’s disaster management agency said it was a new earthquake, not an aftershock, though its effects were not immediately clear. Hundreds of aftershocks were expected after the two temblors, Orhan Tatar told reporters.
Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria’s cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometers (200 miles) to the northeast. A hospital collapsed in the Mediterranean coastal city of Iskenderun, but casualties were not immediately known, Turkey’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, said.
Televisions stations in Turkey aired screens split into four or five, showing live coverage from rescue efforts in the worst-hit provinces. In the city of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, and one could be seen lying on a stretcher on the snowy ground.
Offers of help — from search-and-rescue teams to medical supplies and money — poured in from dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO.
The damage evident from photos of the affected areas is typically associated with a significant loss of life — while bitterly cold temperatures and the difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war will only complicate rescue efforts, said Dr. Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University.
In Turkey, people trying to leave the quake-stricken regions caused traffic jams, hampering efforts of emergency teams trying to reach the affected areas. Authorities urged residents not to take to the roads. Mosques around the region were opened to provide shelter for people unable to return to damaged homes amid temperatures that hovered around freezing.
In Diyarbakir, hundreds of rescue workers and civilians formed lines across a mountain of wreckage, passing down broken concrete pieces, household belongings and other debris as they searched for trapped survivors while excavators dug through the rubble below.
In northwest Syria, the quake added new woes to the opposition-held enclave centered on the province of Idlib, which has been under siege for years, with frequent Russian and government airstrikes. The territory depends on a flow of aid from nearby Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense described the situation there as “disastrous.”
In a hospital in Darkush in Idlib, Osama Abdelhamid said most of his neighbors died. He said their shared four-story building collapsed just as he, his wife and three children ran toward the exit. A wooden door fell on them and acted as a shield.
“God gave me a new lease on life,” he said.
In the small Syrian rebel-held town of Azmarin in the mountains by the Turkish border, the bodies of several dead children, wrapped in blankets, were brought to a hospital.
The Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria said the earthquake has caused some damage to the Crusader-built Marqab, or Watchtower Castle, on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. Part of a tower and parts of some walls collapsed.
In Turkey, meanwhile, the quake damaged a historic castle perched atop a hill in the center of the provincial capital of Gaziantep, about 33 kilometers (20 miles) from the epicenter. Parts of the fortresses’ walls and watch towers were leveled and other parts heavily damaged, images from the city showed.
The USGS said the quake was 18 kilometers (11 miles) deep.
More than 1,100 people were killed in 10 Turkish provinces, with some 7,600 injured, according to the country’s disaster management agency. The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed over 430 people, with some 1,280 injured, according to the Health Ministry. In the country’s rebel-held northwest, groups that operate there said the death toll was at least 380, with many hundreds injured.
Huseyin Yayman, a legislator from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several of his family members were stuck under the rubble of their collapsed homes.
“There are so many other people who are also trapped,” he told HaberTurk television by telephone. “There are so many buildings that have been damaged. People are on the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Ankara: As many as 15 people have died, 34 buildings collapsed, and hundreds remain fearful of being trapped under the rubble after a earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale struck Turkey, at dawn on Monday, AFP reported.
According to information Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, the quake occurred at 4:17 am local time.
Kahramanmaraş Hatay and Osmaniye were the cities most affected by the quake.
According to German Center for Geosciences Research a 7.7-magnitude earthquake shook central Turkey early Monday morning.
American Center for Earthquakes said that the magnitude of the earthquake that struck southern Turkey was 7.9 magnitude.
The 6 aftershocks of more than 6 degrees on the Richter scale were monitored.
As per media reports, the citizens in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon felt the aftershocks of the earthquake.
Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said, two people were killed by the quake in Syria.
Pictures broadcast by TRT showed damage to buildings and people gathering on the streets.
As per a report by Reuters, the quake lasted about a minute and shattered windows.
The Turkish Interior Minister said that the ministry’s crews are running the rescue operation in the quake-stricken area in the south of the country, which is subject to aftershocks.
Erdogan: We raised a level four alert
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today, Monday, that “all our teams are on alert, we have raised a level four alert, and this alert includes international assistance.”
He added, “We cannot currently provide clear statements about information related to material and human losses.”
Earthquake zone
Turkey is located in a region with seismic activity that is among the highest in the world.
In November 2022, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck northwest Turkey, leaving about 50 injured, according to Turkish ambulance services.
Another earthquake that struck the Izig region in January 2020 killed more than 40 people.
In October of the same year, a 7-magnitude earthquake struck the Aegean Sea, killing 114 people and injuring more than a thousand others.
Kabul: Two commuters were killed and nine others injured in a road crash in Afghanistan’s Samangan province, provincial traffic police said on Sunday.
The accident took place late Saturday in the Daulatabad area of Hazrat Sultan district when a car collided with another vehicle coming from the opposite direction, killing two travelers on the spot and injuring nine others with some in critical condition, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Congested roads, old vehicles, and reckless driving could be the main reason for road accidents in the war-ravaged country.
Similar road accidents have injured 16 people in Afghanistan’s eastern Parwan and northern Baghlan provinces over the past couple of days.
Amaravati: In a double tragedy in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati district, an engineering student commited suicide in a hostel and the warden died of shock on reaching the spot.
Daharaneswara Reddy (20), a student of a private engineering College in Guduru, hanged himself in the college hostel on Saturday. Hailing from YSR Kadapa district, he was studying CSE second year.
After learning about the incident, hostel warden B. Srinivsaulu Naidu, college principal and other staff members rushed to the place where the student had died by suicide.
Srinivasulu Naidu (54) was shocked to see the student hanging. He collapsed and died on the spot before he was taken to a hospital. Naidu is suspected to have suffered cardiac arrest.
Police said they have registered a case in connection with the student’s suicide and took up investigation.
Israeli police said the attack occurred in Neve Yaakov, a Jewish area in east Jerusalem. It said forces rushed to the scene and shot the gunman. “The terrorist was neutralized,” it said, using a term that typically means an attacker has been killed. There was no immediate confirmation of his condition.
Israel’s national rescue service, MADA, initially confirmed five deaths and five other people wounded, including a 70-year-old woman, a 60-year-old woman and a teenage boy. Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital later said one man in his 40s had died from his wounds.
The shooting was the deadliest on Israelis since a 2008 shooting killed eight people in a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Given the location and timing, it threatened to trigger a tough response from Israel.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant scheduled a meeting with his army chief and other top security officials.
Overnight Thursday, Gaza militants fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel, with all of them either intercepted or landing in open areas. Israel responded with a series of airstrikes on targets in Gaza. No casualties were reported. Earlier in the day, Gallant had ordered Israel to prepare for new action in Gaza “if necessary.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s shooting. In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the attack was “a revenge and natural response” to the killing of nine Palestinians in Jenin on Thursday.
At several locations across the Gaza Strip, dozens of Palestinians gathered in spontaneous demonstrations to celebrate the Jerusalem attack, with some coming out of dessert shops with large trays of sweets to distribute. In downtown Gaza City, celebratory gunfire could be heard, as cars honked and calls of “God is great!” wafted from mosque loudspeakers. In the West Bank town of Jericho, Palestinians launched fireworks and honked horns in celebration.
The attack escalated tensions that were already heightened following the deadly military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin — where nine people, including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman, were killed. It was the deadliest single raid in the West Bank in two decades. A 10th Palestinian was killed in separate fighting near Jerusalem.
Palestinians had marched in anger earlier Friday as they buried the last of the 10 Palestinians killed a day earlier.
Scuffles between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters erupted after the funeral for a 22-year-old Palestinian north of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, but calm prevailed in the contested capital and in the blockaded Gaza Strip for most of the day.
Signs that the situation might be calming quickly dissolved with Friday night’s shooting. Israel’s opposition leader, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, called it “horrific and heartbreaking.”
There was no immediate response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken’s trip is now likely to be focused heavily on lowering the tensions. He is likely to discuss the underlying causes of the conflict that continue to fester, the agenda of Israel’s new far-right government and the Palestinian Authority’s decision to halt security coordination with Israel in retaliation for the deadly raid.
The Biden administration has been deeply engaged with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in recent days, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, underscoring the “urgent need here for all parties to deescalate to prevent the further loss of civilian life and to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”
“We’re certainly deeply concerned by this escalating cycle of violence in the West Bank as well as the rockets that have been apparently fired from Gaza,” Kirby said before the new shooting. “And of course, we condemn all acts that only further escalate tensions.”
While residents of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank were on edge, midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, often a catalyst for clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police, passed in relative calm.
Both the Palestinian rockets and Israeli airstrikes seemed limited so as to prevent growing into a full-blown war. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several smaller skirmishes since the militant group seized power in Gaza from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.
Tensions have soared since Israel stepped up raids in the West Bank last spring, following a series of Palestinian attacks. Jenin, which was an important a militant stronghold during the 2000-2005 intifada and has again emerged as one, has been the focus of many of the Israeli operations.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, making 2022 the deadliest in those territories since 2004, according to leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Last year, 30 people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
So far this year, 30 Palestinians have been killed, according to a count by The Associated Press.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed.
Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, warned that “the Israeli escalation in Jenin is dangerous and disturbing and undermines international efforts to advance the priority of the peace agenda.” The UAE recognized Israel in 2020 along with Bahrain, which has remained silent on the surge in violence.
In the West Bank, Fatah announced a general strike and most shops were closed in Palestinian cities. The PA said Thursday it would halt the ties that its security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants. Previous threats have been short-lived, in part because of the benefits the authority enjoys from the relationship, and also due to U.S. and Israeli pressure.
The PA has limited control over scattered enclaves in the West Bank, and almost none over militant strongholds like the Jenin camp.
Israel says its raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart attacks. The Palestinians say they further entrench Israel’s 55-year, open-ended occupation of the West Bank, which Israel captured along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want those territories to form any eventual state.
Israel has established dozens of settlements in the West Bank that house 500,000 people. The Palestinians and much of the international community view settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace, even as talks to end the conflict have been moribund for over a decade.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
