More than 84,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or are heavily damaged following two huge earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks, Minister of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change Murat Kurum announced on Friday.
More than 7,000 personnel surveyed over 684,000 buildings across 11 provinces, of which a total of 84,726 were found to have been either destroyed or heavily damaged, Murat Kurum told reporters.
The damaged buildings need to be urgently demolished, Kurum said as he urged residents to stay away from them.
The minister said the government will begin major reconstruction efforts in several hard-hit cities starting in March and pledged that new residential projects would be chosen with the utmost care and after precise ground studies.
Turkish authorities have been blasted for lax enforcement of construction regulations, which may have contributed to the high death toll.
More than 50 people, including contractors, have been arrested in connection with collapsed buildings, state news agency Anadolu reported.
The first quake of magnitude 7.7 struck Turkiye and Syria in the early hours of February 6; another large tremor hit at noon that day and there have been more than 4,700 aftershocks, disaster authority AFAD said.
In Turkiye alone, 38,044 people are known to have died as of Friday.
Several thousand more perished in neighboring conflict-torn Syria, where the disaster response has been mired in international political wrangling and hindered by poor infrastructure.
(With inputs from agencies)
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