Turkish rescue teams have located more survivors of earthquakes that struck almost two weeks ago a total of more than 46 000 people are now known to have been killed in turkey and Syria with Millions left homeless the Turkish city of antakia is one of the most severely damaged with residential areas and some significant historic monuments destroyed well let’s go live now to the Turkish city of Adana where we can speak to our correspondent Caroline Davies thanks for talking to us Caroline so what’s the situation that you’ve been witnessing at the moment join Adana which is about 500 kilometers away from where we’ve been recently seeing pictures of horrific destruction in antakia yeah so we’re actually about 200 kilometers from from the epicenter and as you say we are not that far away from antakia and we have spent the last few days in antakia in the Scandal and in various different cities that have been very severely affected by the earthquake and of course as you move closer to the epicenter the level of Destruction becomes far greater so driving through the city of antakia in the last few days the rubble has been swept to the side but it is so close to the edge of the cars that it almost seems like you’d Reach Out And Touch It Through the Windows it seems it’s uh the amount of Devastation and destruction is hard to comprehend but of course we have the news today that um that the official to rescue for operation that will be happening here athad which is the emergency and disaster body in turkey has said that the rescue operation will be winding down in the course of today they’ve actually said that many of the rescue operations have already started to reduce there were 11 000 Rescuers here from 80 different countries in the majority of them have now left and to give you an idea about how things are starting to to be withdrawn back hatai province which was obviously very severely hit on Friday there were 200 buildings that were being checked by Saturday that had dropped down to 98 and in marash which is the epicenter of the earthquake there are only about 19 buildings still being searched through at the moment of course early in the hours of tomorrow morning will be two weeks on from when the earthquake hit and I think that the the feeling here is that things are progressing from focusing on on the dead and finding if there is anyone left in the rubble to now focusing on humanitarian effort and the living and in the midst of all that obviously even as rescue efforts are being pulled back there are still many people hoping to find family members that are missing and we’ve heard that Secretary of State in the for the United States Anthony blinken is going to be visiting as well just talk to us about the level of support that’s still coming into turkey and whether it is enough yes I think every time we hear stories of rescues there are families who are Sitting Waiting in chairs by the side of buildings where they last saw their loved ones hoping that that might be replicated for them that their loved one might still be under the rubble but the Hope over the course of the last few days really has dwindled for many of those families and often they’ve said to us that they just want to know what has happened to their loved one even if that means pulling out a body that they then have something they have their loved one to bury they know what has happened but it’s still very difficult I think for many of those families to hear that the rescue operation is now drawing a line very soon the rescue operation have said that there will be some buildings where Searchers will continue as you say secretary blinken is here he is planning to visit to share his condolences to talk about the sort of further support that America can provide to Turkey in the aftermath of the earthquake and he’s also here to have discussions with turkey on the basis of the fact that turkey is a NATO member as well and so there’ll be discussions about the alliance too we’re imagine that it’ll be not totally dissimilar to some of the conversations that were being had earlier in the week when Jen stoltenberg the head of NATO was here in the country and also met turkey’s government and that was talking about the the relationship and trying to encourage turkey to ratify for both Finland and Sweden to be able to join the alliance at the moment turkey and Hungary are the two countries that have not yet done that so yes there’s a still a very strong focus on the earthquake and on help that can be needed but also this visit by the U.S Secretary of State Anthony blinken is also going to to discuss some form of Alliance too with turkey all right Caroline Davies thank you very much for joining us from the city of Adana there in Turkey.
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