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A funeral ceremony is carried out at a mass grave web site in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, the place hundreds of our bodies from the earthquake are already buried and extra graves are nonetheless being dug.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
A funeral ceremony is carried out at a mass grave web site in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, the place hundreds of our bodies from the earthquake are already buried and extra graves are nonetheless being dug.
Claire Harbage/NPR
PAZARCIK, Turkey — With so many individuals killed abruptly in final week’s earthquake, Turkey faces an enormous logistical problem of burying tens of hundreds of individuals over a span of only a few days.
Ali Gul has misplaced 5 relations to the Feb. 6 earthquake. He is buried two of them within the southeastern city of Pazarcik. Three extra are presumed useless within the rubble of their collapsed residence buildings.
Rescue groups have informed him they’re near extracting his uncle’s physique from a particles pile within the close by metropolis of Kahramanmaras.
Gul and his brother Fatih are on the cemetery in Pazarcik to arrange a spot for his or her uncle’s physique after it lastly is free of the rubble. Ali needs his uncle’s grave to be prepared.
“We’re initially from right here, so we wish to deliver our useless again right here,” Ali says.
The brothers have employed three employees from the cemetery to arrange the plot. The gravediggers inform them the traditional worth for the work, however shortly guarantee them, “If you have no cash, we’ll dig it at no cost.”
The spot is simply outdoors the wall of the cemetery, subsequent to different contemporary mounds of earth marked with rough-hewn wood planks. Names, start dates and the loss of life date “02.06.23” are inscribed on the planks.
A wood plank marks a grave in a cemetery in Pazarcik, Turkey.
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Jason Beaubien/NPR
A wood plank marks a grave in a cemetery in Pazarcik, Turkey.
Jason Beaubien/NPR
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake has killed greater than 37,000 in Turkey and Syria. Practically 500 funerals have already been held in Pazarcik, in line with a cemetery official. Attributable to an absence of house, many had been buried in a freshly plowed discipline subsequent to this cemetery.
Fatih is employed with the native municipal authorities. He says it has been loads of work, however everybody will finally be correctly laid to relaxation. The city arrange a particular space in a municipal storage the place Islamic corpse washers ritually cleaned the our bodies.
Farmers from outlying rural areas, he says, packed their useless family members into open wagons, coated them with snow after which pulled them into city with a tractor to be cleansed and blessed.
“Pazarcik has a inhabitants of seven,000,” Fatih says. Nobody is being buried right here as unidentified, he says: “We all know everybody. Our household ties are too sturdy.”
Ali and Fatih watch the gravediggers methodically put together their uncle’s grave with shovels and a pickax. There is a calmness on the cemetery in Pazarcik.
That is not the case elsewhere in Turkey.
Thirty miles west of Pazarcik, in Kahramanmaras, a metropolis of greater than 1,000,000 folks, the air is thick with wooden smoke and mud from backhoes digging by way of the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Our bodies are moved to a mass grave web site in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, the place they’re washed and buried.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Our bodies are moved to a mass grave web site in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, the place they’re washed and buried.
Claire Harbage/NPR
The principle soccer stadium is stuffed with white tents offering non permanent shelters for tons of of people that misplaced their properties. Proper subsequent to the stadium, officers have arrange a morgue inside a gymnasium. The car parking zone holds a soup kitchen.
Fritz Mertens is with a staff of German undertakers known as Deathcare who’re volunteering on the morgue. When automobiles arrive on the gate, he directs them to the correct in the event that they wish to get meals and to the left in the event that they wish to drop off useless our bodies.
The volunteers from Mertens’ group clear and disinfect the our bodies.
“If the physique bag is broken, we get a brand new one,” he says.
A health care provider on web site tries to formally confirm the identification of the corpse and explanation for loss of life, if doable. Mertens says greater than 1,000 our bodies got here by way of this makeshift morgue over the course of only a few days. They hold coming.
A lot of the our bodies from in and round Kahramanmaras are despatched to a brand new mass grave on the outskirts of town.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
A lot of the our bodies from in and round Kahramanmaras are despatched to a brand new mass grave on the outskirts of town.
Claire Harbage/NPR
From the gymnasium in Kahramanmaras, relations of the deceased can accumulate the corpses. However with hundreds useless on this metropolis alone, most households have nowhere to take them. All the cemeteries are full. So many of the our bodies are despatched to a brand new mass grave on the outskirts of town.
The mass grave extends up a rocky hillside. It appears to be like out over a inexperienced valley with snow-capped mountains on the far aspect. The temperature is simply above freezing.
A gentle stream of corpses retains arriving in ambulances, vehicles and even personal automobiles. A girl sits on the bottom caressing a full black physique bag.
Every physique is at first inspected and photographed by cops. Then the corpse is zipped again into its bag and despatched to be ritually washed in line with Islamic customized.
Scarves are tied to a wood plank grave marker.
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Scarves are tied to a wood plank grave marker.
Claire Harbage/NPR
On the prime of the hill, there are 19 tents for physique washing.
A bunch of feminine physique washers takes a break and huddle round a small hearth to heat up. They put on lengthy blue surgical smocks over puffy winter jackets.
One in all them, Mevlude Guney, says the ladies working right here have come from throughout Turkey to assist. Guney is from town of Erzurum, a few 10-hour drive from Kahramanmaras.
At house, she’s a trainer. “My mom was a gassal,” she says, the phrase utilized in Turkey for an Islamic corpse washer. Her mom taught her the right means beneath Islam to arrange a physique for burial.
However she’s by no means been concerned in caring for our bodies from a catastrophe like this one. At her tent alone, the ladies say they wash 70 our bodies a day. This work, they are saying, is their duty and responsibility as Muslims.
At another graveyards in Turkey, employees say that in a catastrophe like this one, the gassal can do an abbreviated model of the washing and it is even permitted to skip the cleansing solely.
Grief-stricken mourners go to the cemetery. Some funerals have a number of relations whereas others have dozens of relations in attendance.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Grief-stricken mourners go to the cemetery. Some funerals have a number of relations whereas others have dozens of relations in attendance.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Simply outdoors Guney’s tent, hundreds of contemporary graves lengthen down the hillside. The graveyard is so huge that an older lady frets that she’ll by no means discover her liked one’s grave once more. Different folks tie items of string and scarves to the generic wood planks.
A number of funerals are occurring directly and the method of burying the useless is fixed.
Backhoes claw trenches into the bottom. Males decrease the black physique baggage one after the other. At some burials, there are a handful of relations who watch and pray. At others, dozens.
For the unidentified, troopers and police are known as to face on the graveside.
As quickly as one physique is roofed with dust, one other arrives.
Samantha Balaban and Tuğba Öcek contributed to this story.
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