Beasley Terms Situation in Turkiye and Syria After the Earthquakes ‘Apocalyptic’

Feb. 27, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—After visiting the affected areas in Turkiye, the World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley reported that he was confronted with “apocalyptic” scenes. “You can see this on TV all you want, but until you're here on the ground, it's impossible to imagine the scale of devastation the earthquake has caused in Turkiye. Antakya was a city of 1.5M people—now it's a ghost town. There's only one way to describe this: Apocalyptic,” Beasley said after visiting the city of Antakya in Turkiye’s Hatay province. “Entire neighborhoods have been flattened; homes destroyed, schools and shops closed; lives torn apart. The scale of devastation here is truly incomprehensible,” he said.

Beasley added in a statement that the situation on the Syrian side amounted to a “catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” referring to the past 12 years of civil war. He stressed the urgency of scaling up food deliveries to Syria “through all routes—without any restrictions,” and called for “all parties to facilitate access.”