Syrian family of seven dies in fire after surviving quake

ISTANBUL (AFP): Five Syrian children and their parents died on Friday in a fire that struck a Turkish home they moved to after surviving last week’s earthquake, local media reported.

The Syrian family moved to the central region of Konya from the southeastern Turkish city of Nurdagi, which was badly hit by the February 6 temblor.

The death toll from the 7.8-magnitude quake has surpassed 41,000 across southeastern Turkiye and Syria, becoming the region’s deadliest natural disaster in centuries.

Anadolu state news agency said the Syrian family had moved in with their relatives in Konya after the quake, following a path taken by millions of others displaced by the disaster.

“We saw the fire but we could not intervene. A girl was rescued from the window,” resident Muhsin Cakir told Anadolu.

The five children who died were aged between four and 13, Anadolu said.

It was unclear whether the girl who was rescued was a member of the same family.

Turkiye is home to nearly four million Syrians.

Many of them live in southeastern regions devastated by last week’s disaster, which has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 people in Turkiye and nearly 3,700 in Syria, according to official figures.