Saturday, February 25, 2023 – 3:10 pm
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag announced on Saturday that at least 184 people have been detained on charges of negligence regarding buildings that collapsed in devastating earthquakes in the country’s south.
The government has been criticized for tolerating poor building standards. Contractors are also among those detained.
And Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that the mayor of Nordag district of Gaziantep province was also arrested. He added that Mayor Okesh Kavak was facing trial.
The series of earthquakes began on Feb. 6, when two 7.7-magnitude quakes rocked southeast Turkey and northern Syria, followed soon after by another 7.6-magnitude quake in the region, followed by more than 9,000 aftershocks, according to Turkish sources.
According to the latest statistics, the death toll from earthquakes in the two countries has risen to more than fifty thousand people.
The Turkish emergency agency AFAD said there were 44,218 deaths in Turkey alone.
More than 5,900 deaths were recently recorded in Syria.
More than 173,000 buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to the Turkish government.
Eleven states were hit by earthquakes in Turkey, and the northwest of the country was hit in Syria.
Little is known about the situation in Syria, which has been torn apart by civil war since 2011.
