Brothers sleeping in car as they search for missing Canadian sister in Turkey

Two brothers have flown to southern Turkey from Canada to search for their missing sister, who hasn't been heard from since earthquakes rocked her city last Monday.

Samar Zora, 33, is from Halifax. She was living on the ground floor of a five-storey apartment building in Antakya, in Hatay province,conducting research for her PhDin anthropology when the quakes struck. Her brothers, Muthana and Saad, haven't heard from her since.

Dissatisfied with the support they were receiving from the Canadian Embassy, the brothers travelled to the disaster zone to search for her themselves. They plan to stay as long as it takes.

"This is our situation, but this is one of thousands. We are sitting and crying with local Turkish people," Saadsaid.

WATCH | The desperate search for a Canadian missing in Turkey:

Canadian woman missing in Turkey; brothers fly in to find answers

2 years ago

Duration 3:50

Brothers of Samar Zora, a Canadian woman who was conducting research in Turkey, are desperately trying to find answers after they lost contact with her when an earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey and northeastern Syria on Feb. 6.

"We need to confirm her. We need to see her. We have to have a proper burial for respect of the dead,"Muthana added.

The brothers are sleeping in a car and asking anyone they can for help. They flagged down rescue crews from South Korea and Hungary, and havebeen told it may take a month for heavy equipment to reach Samar's building to movedebris.

On Saturday, someone with thermal imaging equipment visited the site and told Muthana where he should dig. Three local men pitched in, but they were forced to stop because it was too dangerous.

The brothers also connected with one of Samar's friends and are searching local hospitals and a cemetery where mass burials are being conducted.

Turkish justice officials targeting contractors

As the desperate ground search for survivors continues, Turkish authorities are targeting contractors allegedly involved with buildings that collapsed in the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes that killed more than 33,000 people. Rescuers found more survivors in the rubble on Sunday, including a pregnant woman and two children.

The death toll from the 7.8-magnitude and 7.5-magnitude quakes that struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria rose to 33,179 and was certain to increase as search teams find more bodies. As despair bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescue efforts, the focus turned to assigning blame.

Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes. While the quakes were powerful, victims, experts and people across Turkey are blaming faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.

Turkey's construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.

Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.

The Justice Ministry said three people were under arrest pending trial, seven were detained and another seven were barred from leaving Turkey.

Authorities at Istanbul Airport on Sunday detained two contractors held responsible for the destruction of several buildings in Adiyaman, the private DHA news agency and other media reported. The pair were reportedly on their way to Georgia.

One of the detained contractors, Yavuz Karakus, told reporters: "My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules," DHA quoted him as saying.

Meanwhile, the efforts of Italian and Turkish rescuers paid off when they found a 35-year-old man from the wreckage in the hard-hit city of Antakya. He appeared unscathed as he was moved by stretcher to an ambulance, private NTV television reported.

Overnight, a child was freed in the town of Nizip, in Gaziantep, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, while a 32-year woman was rescued from the ruins of aneight-storey building in Antakya. She asked for tea when she emerged, according to NTV.

In Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre of the first quake, workers tried to reach a survivor detected by dogs beneath a now-pancaked seven-storey building, NTV reported.

Those found alive, however, remained the rare exception.

Makeshift graveyard

A large makeshift graveyard was under construction in Antakya's outskirts on Saturday. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously. The hundreds of graves, spaced no more than a metreapart, were marked with simple wooden planks.

Hatay's airport, where the runway was damaged, reopened on Sunday, the Transportation Ministry said, which should help to get aid into the region.

There are 34,717 Turkish search-and-rescue personnel involved. On Sunday, Turkey's Foreign Affairs Ministry said they have been joined by representatives from 74 countries, totalling 9,595 personnel. Eight more countries are expected to send search-and-rescue teams with 874 personnel, it said.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the pain will ripple forward, calling the disaster an "unfolding tragedy that's affecting millions."

"The compounding crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic declineand now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters from the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Tedros said WHO experts were waiting to cross into the northwest of Syria, "where we have been told the impact is even worse."

Martin Griffiths, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border on Sunday, said Syrians have been left "looking for international help that hasn't arrived."

"We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned," he said, adding, "My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can."