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Turkey earthquake: Death toll could increase eight-fold – WHO

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(picture BBC)

BBC quoting the World Health Organisation reported that the death toll from a strong earthquake in south-eastern Turkey, near Syria’s border, could rise eight-fold.

The toll, which currently stands at more than 3,400 people, has increased rapidly since the first earthquake struck early on Monday morning.

About 12 hours later, a second powerful tremor hit further north.

Rescuers have been combing through mountains of rubble in freezing and snowy conditions to find survivors.

Countries around the world are sending support to help the rescue efforts, including specialist teams, sniffer dogs and equipment.

The US Geological Survey said the 7.8 magnitude tremor struck at 04:17 local time (01:17 GMT) at a depth of 17.9km (11 miles) near the city of Gaziantep.

Seismologists said the first quake was one of the largest ever recorded in Turkey. Survivors said it took two minutes for the shaking to stop.

The second quake – triggered by the first – had a magnitude of 7.5, and its epicentre was in the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras province.

Many aftershocks are still being felt across the region.

The number of dead and injured from both Turkey and Syria has increased rapidly throughout Monday.

The WHO has warned that those numbers are likely to increase as much as eight times, as rescuers find more victims in the rubble.

“We always see the same thing with earthquakes, unfortunately, which is that the initial reports of the numbers of people who have died or who have been injured will increase quite significantly in the week that follows,” the WHO’s senior emergency officer for Europe, Catherine Smallwood, told AFP.

Ms Smallwood added that the snowy conditions will leave many people without shelter, adding to the dangers.

Many of the victims are in war-torn northern Syria, where millions of refugees live in camps on both sides of the border with Turkey. There have been dozens of fatalities reported in rebel-held areas.

Thousands of buildings across both the countries have collapsed, and several videos show the moment they fell, as onlookers ran for cover. Many buildings that were as large as 12 storeys high are now flattened, roads have been destroyed and there are huge mountains of rubble as far as the eye can see.

Among the buildings destroyed was Gaziapten Castle , a historic landmark that has stood for more than 2,000 years.

The BBC’s Middle East correspondent Anna Foster, reporting from the Turkish city of Osmaniye, near the epicentre, described a devastating scene.

“It’s absolutely pouring with rain which is hampering the rescue efforts. There is no power at all in the city tonight.

“We’re still feeling regular after-shocks… and there are still concerns that there may be still more buildings to collapse,” our correspondent said.



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India ‘engaging with US’ after shackled deportees spark anger

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The US military plane carrying Indian deportees landed in Amritsar on Wednesday [BBC]

India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has told parliament the government is working with the US to ensure Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.

His statement came a day after a US military flight brought back 104 Indians accused of entering the US illegally.

One of the deportees told the BBC they had been handcuffed throughout the 40-hour flight, sparking criticism.

But Jaishankar said he had been told by the US that women and children were not restrained. Deportation flights to India had been taking place for several years and US procedures allowed for the use of restraints, he added.

Deportation in the US is organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We have been informed by ICE that women and children are not restrained,” Jaishankar said.

He added that according to ICE, the needs of deportees during transit, including for food and medical attention, were attended to and deportees could be unrestrained during bathroom breaks.

“There has been no change from past procedure,” he added.

However Jaspal Singh, one of the deportees on the flight that landed in Amritsar city in the state of Punjab on Wednesday, told BBC Punjabi that he was shackled throughout the flight.

“We were tortured in many ways. My hands and feet were tied after we were put on the plane. The plane stopped at several places,” he said, adding that he was unshackled only after the plane landed in Amritsar.

BBC/Gurpreet Chawla A photo of Jaspal Singh
Jaspal Singh spent 11 days in the US before he was deported [BBC]

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States” and it was US policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens”.

The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the “farthest deportation flight yet using military transport”.

President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.

In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.

Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.

Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.

[BBC]

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More than 100 women raped and burned alive in DR Congo jailbreak, UN says

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Footage from the jailbreak shows people fleeing from the building as black smoke rises into the air [BBC]

More than 100 female prisoners were raped and then burned alive during a jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to the UN.

Hundreds of prisoners broke out of Munzenze prison last Monday, after fighters from the M23 rebel group began to take over the city.

Between 165 and 167 women were assaulted by male inmates during the jailbreak, an internal UN document seen by the BBC says.

The report states that most of the women were killed after the inmates set fire to the prison.

The BBC has not been able to verify the reports.

Goma, a major city of more than a million people, was captured after the Rwanda-backed M23 executed a rapid advance through eastern DR Congo.

The city was plunged into chaos, with bodies lying in the streets and missiles reportedly flying over residential homes.

Footage from last week’s jailbreak showed people fleeing from the building as smoke rose in the background. Heavy gunfire could also be heard.

[BBC]

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Philippines feud escalates as lawmakers vote to impeach vice-president

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Sara Duterte, the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, has been accused of misusing millions of dollars in public funds [BBC]

The Philippines’ parliament has voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte following complaints about alleged corruption.

Duterte has been accused of misusing millions of dollars in public funds and threatening to have President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr assassinated.

She has denied the charges and alleged she is the victim of a political vendetta.

The shock move is widely seen as an escalation of the bitter feud between Duterte and Marcos which has kept the nation on edge for months. Both are scions of Philippine political dynasties: she is the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, while he is the son of the late strongman leader Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

A total of 215 out of 306 members of the House of Representatives voted for impeachment, well above the one-third threshold needed for the bill to pass.  The bill will now be heard by the 24-member Senate, which will convene as an impeachment court.

If found guilty, Duterte faces removal from her post and would be the first vice-president in Philippine history to be impeached.  She is expected to stay in office until the Senate delivers its judgement. A trial date has not been set yet.

Duterte is widely perceived as a potential successor to Marcos, who is ineligible to run again in 2028 as the constitution limits presidents to a single six-year term.

An impeachment would effectively bar her from the presidency, as she would be permanently banned from holding public office.

The move comes ahead of the mid-term elections in May, which will be seen as a referendum for Marcos halfway into his term as well a barometer of public support for Duterte.

Duterte has not commented on the impeachment vote. But her elder brother who represents their hometown of Davao in parliament, Paolo Duterte, said the administration was “treading on dangerous ground” with what he described as a “clear act of political persecution”.

Marcos has also not commented on Duterte’s impeachment. In November, he had said it would be a “waste of time” for lawmakers to impeach her when it has more important work to do.

Since the end of Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s dictatorship and the restoration of democracy in 1986, only one sitting president has been impeached – Joseph Estrada in 2000, for alleged corruption.

But his trial ended without a judgement after a popular revolt forced him from power in January 2001.

Only one impeachment trial made it to a verdict, that of former Supreme Court chief justice Renato Corona, who was convicted of corruption in 2012.

Both the Estrada and Corona impeachment trials were highly politicised and divisive affairs and dragged on for months.

What’s behind the Marcos and Duterte feud?

Duterte and Marcos had presented a picture of unity when they ran for the 2022 elections, calling themselves the “UniTeam”.

But cracks began to appear even before they assumed office, when Duterte asked to handle the defence portfolio in Marcos’ cabinet but instead was made education minister.

Their alliance unravelled further soon after they took power, as they pursued their separate political agendas while differing on crucial fronts such as diplomacy.

Their differences on the Philippines’ relationship to the US and China became more pronounced, as encounters between Philippine and Chinese ships in disputed waters became more frequent.

Marcos has pivoted the Philippines back to the US, reversing the pro-China stance of Duterte’s father.

He has also promised a less violent approach against illegal drug rings, dialling back the elder Duterte’s “war on drugs” that left over 6,000 suspects killed, according to a government count.

The lower house of parliament, where Marcos’s allies hold power, then started scrutinising Duterte’s budget requests, particularly her confidential funds which are not covered by state audits.

In July last year, she resigned from the cabinet.

The feud took a dramatic turn a few months later when, in a late-night livestreamed press conference, Duterte said she “talked to a person” to “go kill” Marcos if she were assassinated.

She later said that she was not plotting to assassinate the President and Marcos had dismissed the threat as a “storm in a teacup”.

Getty Images Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte
Marcos and Duterte won by a landslide in the 2022 election [BBC]

[BBC]

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