Just as search and rescue crews race against the clock, another time-sensitive challenge awaits the next of kin after two earthquakes that hit Türkiye last Monday. Tuba Yolcu is desperate for news of her missing aunt and scours a sports hall where victims of a powerful earthquake that hit her hometown in Türkiye lie in body bags.
"We hear (the authorities) will no longer keep the bodies waiting after a certain period; they say they will take them and bury them," she said. "God willing, we will find her," Yolcu said, with worry etched on her face.
Anguished families flock to sports halls, hospital morgues, or cemeteries in the severely hit Kahramanmaraş, where bodies are piling up, in a bid to find their missing relatives.
"Every unidentified body will eventually be returned to their family," a prosecutor said, trying to soothe the families. "Don't worry; blood samples are taken from every missing body," he assured. Families who cannot reach their loved ones during the rescue work check one by one bodies either in bags or wrapped in blankets.
"We show the faces to their immediate relatives," a crime scene investigator in a hazmat suit told Agence France-Presse (AFP) at a large grave outside the city. Funeral cars deliver a stream of bodies, burying them one by one. "If the identity is unknown, we take fingerprints and tooth samples and compare them with their relatives," said the investigator, who carries a camera around his neck. About 2,000 bodies have been identified at the cemetery, filled with freshly dug graves.
Next to the wooden headstones at the makeshift cemetery, where some are wrapped in scarves, people mourn their relatives. One woman sits near the grave, unable to stop crying. Missing bodies are stored lower down, where investigators take pictures and notes. Yusuf Sekman, from the religious affairs directorate, said the unidentified bodies are also divided according to where their collapsed building was located. This allows relatives to "also look, based on the recovered body's address," he said. "Their samples are taken and noted down on body bags" to help with identification.
