Around 5,000 earthquake victims from a single city have been buried at a site in south-east Turkey.
The mass burial ground in Kahramanmaraş on the edge of the devastated city could eventually be the resting place of around 10,000 of its residents who lost their lives in the devastating natural disaster, according to one senior officer who spoke with The Telegraph.
Another policeman who travelled from Ankara to lead the burial operation said the number of dead bodies arriving at the overflow site was growing “every day”.
Entire streets have been levelled throughout Kahramanmaraş, once home to 500,000 people, with bodies continuing to be pulled from its collapsed buildings following Monday’s 7.8 and 7.4 earthquakes.
One distraught rescue official in the city approached The Telegraph pleading for help, saying he did not have the manpower to retrieve 100 dead people believed to be buried beneath an apartment block.
White makeshift tents have been erected on the edge of Kahramanmaraş cemetery to allow the cleaning of bodies before they are buried in one of the many freshly-dug graves.
Bereaved relatives were seen collapsing at the site, screaming and crying, while large groups were gathered in prayer as the deceased were buried.
A constant stream of cars and vans carrying earthquake victims to be buried could be observed at the burial ground on Saturday.
One truck had several body bags placed on top of each other in its trunk.
Many bodies that had yet to be buried were simply left on the roadside in body bags.
One man retrieved from the back of his car a body bag around 4ft long – likely to be a young child or toddler.
Police officers who accompanied The Telegraph around the cemetery provided face masks, while mourning relatives wore coverings over their nose and mouths to guard against the scent of decaying bodies.
“I think the numbers will be bigger than is being said,” the senior police officer told The Telegraph, referring to the death toll.
“I’ve witnessed earthquakes before but this is so, so big. I’ve not seen this size before.”
He said around 5,000 people from Kahramanmaraş alone had already been buried in the cemetery. “I think the [final] number will be 10,000.”
The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said his unit had arrived on Tuesday and had not stopped working since. “We are so, so tired,” he said. “But we are doing what we can.
“These people are mourning. We have to keep working for them.”
The scale of devastation seen in Kahramanmaraş is repeated across south-east Turkey.
In provincial towns and cities such as Nurdagi, Iskandarun, Malatya and Gaziantep, hundreds and thousands are suspected to have been killed, making it one of the worst natural disasters to hit Turkey in decades.
With many more injured, millions displaced and vital infrastructure destroyed, the south-east region is now facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
The death toll across Turkey and Syria currently stands at nearly 25,000, but a UN emergency relief coordinator said on Saturday that it is likely to double.
“I think it is difficult to estimate precisely as we need to get under the rubble but I’m sure it will double or more,” Martin Griffiths told Sky News.
“It’s deeply shocking… the idea that these mountains of rubble still hold people, some of them still alive.
“We haven’t really begun to count the number of dead.”
Search and rescue efforts continue after 7.8 and 7.4 magnitude earthquakes hit Kahramanmaraş
Outside of the cemetery perimeter in Kahramanmaraş, one 17-year-old, called Alparslan, said he had just buried his grandmother, who was killed in her home after it collapsed in Kahramanmaraş on Monday.
“We are very angry at the government,” he said. “We waited for help for three days but they didn’t come.”
Last night Turkish authorities arrested more than 100 people across the 10 provinces affected by the quake, the state-run Anadolu News Agency reported on Saturday.
They also appointed prosecutors to bring criminal charges against all the “constructors and those responsible” for the collapse of buildings that failed to meet existing codes, which had been put in place after a similar disaster in 1999.
Not built to tremor regulations.
The arrests were the first steps by the Turkish state toward identifying and punishing people who may have contributed to the deaths of their fellow citizens in the quake.
One, named as Mehmet Yaşar Coşkun, the contractor of Rönesans Residence which was destroyed in the earthquake, was detained at Istanbul Airport while trying to flee to Montenegro.
The 12-storey Rönesans Residence, which has 250 apartments and was completed in 2013 in Hatay’s Antakya district, was razed to the ground and it is thought that the majority of its 1,000 residents are still under the rubble.
There has been significant public anger over the poor quality of housing, much of which was not built to tremor regulations.
Meanwhile, on Saturday Austria and Germany suspended their aid missions in Turkey citing security concerns after “clashes”.
Michael Bauer, a spokesman for the Austrian ministry of defence, said the country’s forces were operating in “an increasingly difficult security situation”, and that they would continue their operations once the environment becomes safe.
