The Turkish authorities raised this Friday to almost 48,000 the death toll in Turkey after the earthquake on February 6 and its aftershocks, an increase of almost 2,000 compared to the last official balance.
So far, we have registered the death of 47,932 people in the civil registry. Of that total, 6,265 are foreign citizens,” Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu told a news conference in Istanbul.
The most recent official data, published earlier this week, pointed to the deaths of 46,104 people. However, the new balance shows that the numbers refer to people already duly identified.
In this sense, there are more than 1,619 fatalities whose identity has not yet been established, either through DNA or fingerprints.
In addition, there are a total of 264 requests [para procurar desaparecidos] in the police,” Soylu added.
For his part, the Turkish Minister of Urbanism, Murat Kurum, indicated that the registry of buildings damaged by the earthquake in five of the 11 affected provinces has already been completed, with 1.7 million properties analyzed.
According to Kurum, 96.7 percent of the buildings that collapsed were built before 1999, the year in which new regulations were introduced that oblige all types of construction to include anti-seismic measures.
Source: Observadora
