>> this is dw news from berlin. the desperate search for survivors of two major earthquake in turkey and syria. rescuers are working in freezing conditions, trying to reach people still trapped. thousands have been confirmed dead and the turkish president today declared a state of emergency. in syria, time running out to find people who may still be alive under the rubble. we have moments like this,

moments of hope. this newborn baby was rescued earlier today. coming up tonight, germany's defense minister makes a surprise visit to kyiv as germany and other countries announced new plans to supply ukraine with at least 100 battle tanks. i'm brent goff viewers watching in the unit -- brent goff. welcome. we begin tonight with the numbers and they are not good. more than 6000 people have died from the earthquakes in turkiye and syria. the death toll is expected to rise even further as the rescue and recovery efforts continue. the united nations says that in total, up to 23 million people

could be affected. the first tremor was centered north of the turkish city. it caused destruction, stretching along the southern border in parts of northern syria. with limited equipment and help, rescuers in both countries are facing a race against time and freezing conditions. >> the scale of damage is monumental. so is the attempt to save lives a day after the earthquakes shook this part of turkiye. in this neighborhood, rescue workers have some success. and confirm they found a survivor. relief for the residents and for the rescuers, too. seeing the fruit of their labor.

it is a delicate operation, trying to find people in the wreckage. rescuers have to figure out where in the building survivors are trapped. they stabilized the rubble to keep it from collapsing further and then they did. the process is painstaking. and not fast enough for this woman. she suffers the agony of knowing her loved ones are so close yet so far. still, the rescue workers keep hope alive, combing through the debris, occasionally pausing. to listen for signs of life even as the clock is ticking. brent: our correspondent, teri schultz, she is in southern turkiye. she sent us this update of the

rescue efforts underway there. teri: here in the city, we are standing in what remains of a five-story building that collapsed yesterday in the second earthquake here in this region. the people bend me, some of them military personnel, most of them just ordinary citizens, digging in the rubble for what they say is one person still missing from this building. sadly but in some ways, remarkably, only nine people were killed in this particular collapse. so they are determined to find the body of this last resident. elsewhere in the city, there is no electricity as we drove into town. the streets are completely dark. people are huddled around fires, either afraid to go back in the buildings where they live if those buildings are even still standing. they are told perhaps not to go back in those areas so they gathered together, afraid of what comes next as aftershocks continue to be felt throughout the region.

brent: earlier, we spoke with our correspondent who is now in central turkiye, the epicenter of the earthquake. he told us what is happening there. >> the second earthquake hit in turkiye. we were here a couple of hours ago and the situation is not so good. the rescue efforts are still continuing. we know that there's seven people in the rubble, as you can see below. five of them were hurt but after, they come here, the rescue workers. three people were also in this place so two of them are dead but one of them is alive and

rescue workers are trying to rescue that person. he is 27 years old. all the people and workers here are here to rescue him. by the way, we spent five hours here and in some places, officials are helping the rescue teams but in some places, there are only volunteers. they should help. there are many collapsed buildings. more than 5000 as official reports say. for example, now, we are -- the rebel, actually. so maybe there are people under us. we are not sure. it is so hard. almost minus five degrees.

the work is not easy. electricity is gone. there is no electricity in this city so people are trying their best. the volunteers are trying their best to rescue people. brent: that was our correspondent. reporting from the epicenter of that second earthquake in central turkiye. turkiye's president today declared a state of emergency to free up resources to help his country deal with this disaster. >> in order to ensure that search-and-rescue operations are carried out quickly, we have decided to declare a state of emergency based on article 119 of the constitution. we will complete the process as rapidly and the presidency and parliament with regard to this decision taken for the tent cities that suffered from the earthquake and it will last for three months.

brent: our correspondent, dorian jones, he is in istanbul and he told us more about the president's announcement today. dorian: -- are being given to the president and the security forces and this decision is going to be pretty controversial given the fact that three months will take the country up to one week before the expected date of presidential and parliamentary elections. this will be a deep area of concern for the opposition. they are worried about what can happen with these elections. they are declaring a state of emergency in an area that will be hotly contested and will be controversial. president erdogan suggested these changes are necessary given the huge scale of the task facing emergency workers. he said the double earthquake was unprecedented, posing one of the biggest natural disaster challenges of their 100 year republic. he said they are needed to pay

tribute in the emergency efforts . they are dealing with atrocious weather conditions which is only compounding the magnitude of the task facing them. brent: do we know what our authorities saying about the extent and the level of destruction? dorian: it is just monumental as a task. the double earthquake has caused devastation in a vast area of turkiye. turkiye is used to these big earthquakes but it has never experienced earthquakes that have devastated such a large area. we are talking about an area that goes from boston through new york down to washington. a large area that encompasses 10 of turkiye's largest cities. 13 million people live in this area. as many as 17,000 buildings have collapsed and these are not small buildings. in many cases, 10, 12, 14 stories high, holding dozens of

apartments, talking about tens of thousands of flats, homes of people have been lost. the first quake occurred in the middle of the night. many of those apartments have now become a tomb to the people who once called it their homes. it is a large task facing them. given the fact that it is now a race against time to find survivors, subzero temperatures, and the danger of hypothermia. tens of thousands of people have been made homeless. brent: it's hard to get your mind around the sheer numbers we could be dealing with. we have entire apartment all things that have collapsed. this happened in the middle of the night and people were sleeping. they might not have even known what hit them. what do we know in terms of trying to get people out who may still be alive? what is the government providing in terms of resources to do that? dorian: the government said they had deployed thousands of

search-and-rescue teams all across the region, supported by the military and other emergency services but given the magnitude of this problem, there is growing criticism and calls among people saying that simply help is not arriving. tragic stories of people standing outside their homes, hearing their loved ones trapped, and saying there's no one to help us find them, get them out of these buildings. there is a growing criticism especially in the region which is close to the syrian border, that is one of the worst hit areas. two of the local members of the opposition said there has been very little assistance, saying there are dead bodies all across and thousands of people believed to be trapped in buildings and there is also growing concern for the turkish army, saying they are too slow to deploy. that has been rejected but there is a growing wave of criticism and the government will be looking for emergency efforts to arrive as soon as possible to bolster their efforts. filling the void is the

opposition, the municipalities, sending their home teens here in istanbul. they have said over 100 search-and-rescue teams -- he's visiting the region today with the leader of the main opposition so there is a growing -- between what the government is doing and what the opposition is doing. brent: too many lives hang in the balance. dorian jones with the latest from istanbul. thank you. in syria, rescue efforts are being hampered by a lack of supplies including the heavy equipment needed to clear away the rubble. the window for finding people alive under the debris, as we know, it is closing by the hour. in aleppo, cemetery workers can barely keep up as they begin laying dozens of the dead to rest. >> prayer chants for mass burial sites in syria after destruction struck its border with turkiye. there is sadness of course but

there's physical and mental exhaustion. >> every five minutes, we bury the bodies of four or five people who died in the earthquake. we have not stopped since the morning. we have buried more than 50 bodies and yesterday, we buried around 85 people. >> the missing are now feared dead. there are glimmers of hope as they were to stand my to rescue those who have been tracked'neath flattened homes and hospitals. a baby born during the earthquake survived. the only one of its family to make it out alive. even in the face of hope, desperation is present. >> our situation is very bad. we need food, water, and we fled with just our clothing. we have no shoes. >> that destruction is horrible. the buildings. everything has been reduced to rubble. the number of dead is incredible. the red cross has been instrument or in rescuing those

in need during the civil war but they are begging the international community to lift sanctions imposed in 2011 after assad's regime violently cracked down on antigovernment protesters. >> we need heavy equipment, ambulances, and firefighting vehicles. we don't have heavy machinery to conduct rescue operations. there are a lot of issues due to sanctions, sanctions against the syrian people. >> he says corridors are needed to bring in humanitarian aid and he's asking the united nations to coordinate efforts to make that happen. as it has done successfully with opposition held areas in the past. brent: jennifer higgins is syria policy coordinator at the rescue committee and am on -- amman, jordan. jennifer: thank you so much for having me. we are going into another night

and we are really trying to understand the very real impact that this devastating earthquake has had on southern turkiye and northwest syria and we are continuing to see the death toll rise but this is mostly coming from urban areas and i think what we will get a shock from is when we start to really understand the scale and impact in hard to reach areas, especially in northwest syria. this area of syria was extremely difficult to access and it was largely reliant on humanitarian us instance with challenges with infrastructure from health, water, and electricity and it also has very large populations of displaced people who have been displaced multiple times over the 12 year conflict in syria. >> many people have lost their homes in this earthquake. obviously, they cannot stay out in the elements overnight. it is freezing cold in that part of the world. what is happening in terms of providing shelters for these

people? >> exactly. we have been warning for a very long time about upcoming harsh winter conditions and the need to scale up military assistance even before this current earthquake and now, we are finding people that have survived are now left out to brace the elements, the cold. they urgently need the means to survive which is shelter, which is food, which is basic heat, even for our colleagues based in northwest syria and also in turkiye. they have been staying in cars, working from their phones, laptops have died, so people are trying to mobilize. so many people, especially those that have been living in makeshift tents, etc., are really left out to brace the elements themselves and access to humanitarian corridors needs to be prioritized to make sure the same level of response is happening in northwest syria as we are seeing and other critical places from the earthquake.

brent: are you expecting that type of safe passage to be karen teed by the rebel -- karen teed particularly by the rebels but also the russian military and this. military? -- the syrian military? jennifer: that is an extreme the difficult question to answer. what we are trying to do is get a grasp on what the actual situation is, to understand what is the ability to bring the main crossing for aid from northwest syria to turkiye. bridges have been damaged and this means it's difficult to get supplies to those who need it. as i said, even before this earthquake, humanitarian access was really constrained in this area and most of it comes to one specific weight and from what we know, this point was closed yesterday but it was operational today. what that means in practice, we don't know, but we are monitoring the situation very closely and we are working with our partners within northwest

syria to see what they can do on the ground and how we can start to ramp up and implement a response immediately and remembering that most of the people -- working with these partners, they are now trying to recover themselves from living through this experience. brent: jennifer higgins, we appreciate your time. all the best to you and your team. thank you. jennifer: thank you for having me. brent: let's take a look at some of the other stories making headlines around the world. the syrian city of aleppo has been burying victims of the earthquake. 140 people were laid to rest at an islamic cemetery with many residents feared trapped under the rubble. the death toll is expected to rise. german crews have joined the effort to assist with the operation in turkiye. a team of emergency workers has landed, bringing with them equipment and search dogs.

rescue teams from mexico, india, and israel are also heading to the region with other nations also promising support. >> people turning up in droves to help. hundreds of volunteers at the istanbul airport trying to get to southern turkiye, where the devastating earthquake has killed thousands of people. countries around the world have dispatched rescue teams, equipment, as well as humanitarian aid. among them, mexico, india, in israel. -- and israel. >> our goal is to save lives. we believe that lives could be saved still in this timeslot. the conditions and circumstances are difficult. the weather is cold and the destruction is severe. >> others like new zealand and

australia have pledged to support. >> the condolences from the people of new zealand to those in turkiye and in syria, we know a little bit about earthquakes in new zealand and the significant defeat that can have on people so our hearts are with them. new zealand will also be contributing to the international effort. >> some international rescue teams have already started to arrive. the task ahead of them is daunting. rescue workers in turkiye have been digging through the night to find survivors. an effort made no easier by the biden cold and rain. workers are rushing to find as many people as possible as it has already been a day since the initial earthquake and time may be running out for many who live beneath the debris. brent: turkiye is no stranger to

earthquakes. the country lies on top of several tectonic plates, making it a hotspot of seismic activities. tremors occurring much of turkiye -- occur in much of turkiye because it is crisscrossed by faultlines. the magnitude 7.8 tremor that struck turkiye in syria on monday caused a rupture, more than 100 kilometers along the arabian plates. earlier, we spoke with a seismologist, angelo, who explained why this earthquake event was so powerful. angelo: the earthquakes we used to see in the region in the last two decades, that's at least an order of magnitude higher which means 30 to 50 times more energy with what we observed in the recent years, for example in croatia recently, central italy,

so that is really another order of magnitude which is not surprising for seismologists. it is one of the highest -- one of the regions with the highest hazard and that was not surprising. basically what has happened there, there is movement which basically has accommodated the relative movement of the plate which is relatively small and you squeeze it towards -- turkiye towards greece. to give you a sense of how big this is, it's in order of 200 kilometers. a couple of meters. that has been accumulated through the years in a few minutes. brent: that was seismologist angelo of the german research center for geosciences just outside of berlin. here are some of the other

stories now making headlines around the world this hour. in paris, police have fired tear gas at protesters -- this is the third time this year that hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets . despite widespread opposition, president emmanuel macron has vowed to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64. russia's defense minister says that western weapons in ukraine will lead to an escalation of the war. speaking to military officials today, he said that the supplies "effectively drawn nato countries into the conflict." last year, volodymyr zelenskyy said weapons supplied by the west would not be used for attacks on russian territory. staying with the war in ukraine, the german defense minister made an unannounced visit to ukraine today.

in kyiv, he met volodymyr zelenskyy and held talks with his ukrainian counterpart. the story announced that ukraine will receive more than 100 battle tanks of the older type from a consortium of several european countries. our correspondent, nick connolly , he caught up with the german defense minister in kyiv today and i asked nick what stood out from the german defense minister's visit. nick: he is making a lot of those older tanks. lots of them are going to be only arriving in ukraine towards the end of 2023 if not early 2024 but i think it is important for him to talk about that because the previous announcement of the more modern tanks, it seems like germany and a handful of other countries will be on time but if you read the german press, it seems that a lot of other european countries are going to be much later than suggested or even

promised but i think if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, this is about the mood music, trying to turn a page and get back to more productive dialogue fan had been the case. i asked him how he had spent his time talking to ukrainian politicians, what kind of feedback he got from them. let's have a listen to what he had to say. >> i had two meetings with my ukrainian counterpart. in all those talks, not a word of criticism has been voiced towards germany's approach appeared on the contrary, they are very appreciative of and grateful for how much commitment germany has shown. they would like to see more but not a single word of criticism has been voiced. >> no criticism but let's talk about the timetable here. what he is saying is that these tanks are going to arrive in kyiv a lot later than people were expecting. i'm wondering, with that in

mind, how is his visit being perceived on the ukrainian side? brent: it's important to stress that it seems like germany is actually going to meet its commitments. the other european countries have been pushing germany to send these tanks and had basically been suggesting it was berlin that was blocking everything. it would seem they are not capable of making good on those promises. if you look at the kind of ukrainian response, there is definitely a desire to kind of rollback from the open animosity we saw in previous months to work together better. we also saw the meeting of ukrainian soldiers who had been awarded various metals for -- medals for gallantry. there definitely is a worry that there isn't just the understanding in germany or in europe as a whole of quite how quickly ukraine needs those tanks. we are expecting a big russian offensive the next couple of months and when you hear about

the older tanks being delivered in early 2024, that sounds pretty scary and there is a sense that may be germany is still not pushing those arms manufacturers enough to really deliver faster to ramp up production and it's going to be the same story every time over and over again. ukraine losing a lot of people on the ground and then receiving equipment a bit too slow and into small quantities. -- too small quantities. brent: thank you. you are watching dw news. i will be back to take you through our news of the day. our coverage of the earthquake disaster in turkiye and syria continues. we will be right back.

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>> welcome to life in paris. these are the headlines. president erdogan declares a state of emergency in the areas hit by the earthquakes in southern turkey. the death paul has -- death toll has surpassed 6000. russia masses troops and experts say a military push is expected in the coming days. the u.n.