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Secular religions of race, sex and climate have put U.S. in chokehold: Vivek Ramaswamy

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Three secular religions — race, sex and climate — have put the U.S. in a chokehold today, Republican presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy has said.

Addressing his fellow conservative Republicans, Mr. Ramaswamy also proposed disruptive ideas of dismantling the Department of Education along with the FBI and banning American companies from doing business with China if he is elected as the president of the country in 2024.

“The Declaration of Independence of today is our declaration of independence from China. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, that is the Declaration of Independence he would sign. That is the Declaration of Independence I will sign if I am elected as your next president,” Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, said.

Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. He served as the third president of the U.S. from 1801 to 1809 and was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who announced his decision to enter the 2024 race to the White House last week, noted that he was inspired by former president Donald Trump, 76, and his “America first” vision.

It is time to identify the issues and work aggressively towards them, Mr. Ramaswamy said during his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the top annual event of the Republican Party and its support base— on Saturday.

It was his first major address from the national stage of the CPAC.

In his 18-minute speech, Mr. Ramaswamy said “three secular religions have America in a chokehold today”.

The first of them is this “woke racial religion” that says someone’s identity is based on his skin colour.

“That if you are black, you are inherently disadvantaged. That if you are white, you are inherently privileged no matter your economic background or your upbringing. That your race determines who you are and what you can achieve in life,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

This has created “this new culture of fear in America”, combined with the “second secular religion” that says the “sex of the person you are attracted to has to be hardwired on the day you were born” but your “own biological sex is completely fluid over the course of your lifetime”.

“It makes no sense unless it is a religion. It does not match up to reason, it matches up to religion. And then it makes the same move as the first religion,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

The third one is the climate religion in America that says that “we have to fight carbon emissions at all costs in the United States while we shift those same carbon emissions to places like China,” the Indian-American entrepreneur said.

“…Even if you believe in this religion, you would have embraced nuclear energy, which is the best form of carbon-free energy production known to mankind”.

“And yet these people oppose nuclear energy. What is really going on is that the climate religion has about as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ, which is to say nothing at all. It is about power, dominion, control, punishment and apologising for what we have achieved in this country and the modern West as we know it,” Mr. Ramaswamy said amidst applause from the audience.

The U.S., he said is in the middle of a national identity crisis.

“Take it from me. I am 37 years old. I am a millennial. I was born in 1985. I will tell you this, my generation, really every generation of Americans today, we are so hungry for a cause.

“We are hungry for purpose and meaning and identity at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill our hunger for purpose, faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

He said this is an opportunity for the Republican Party and for the conservative movement to rise to the occasion and fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes woke “poison” to “irrelevance”.

Mr. Ramaswamy said he is all in on the “America first” agenda.

“Believe me, I am an ‘America first’ conservative. I will not apologise for it. But to put America first, we now need to rediscover what America is. And that is why last week I announced my run for US president to deliver a national identity that we are missing in this country,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

“This means that you believe in merit, that you get ahead in this country, not on the colour of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions. And that is why as the US president, I have pledged to get rid of affirmative action in this country once and for all. It is national cancer on our soul,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

‘Ban U.S. companies from doing business in China’

Mr. Ramaswamy said he would ban U.S. companies from doing business in China.

“I think it is important to be honest. If we want to declare independence from China, that means we got to be willing to ban most U.S. businesses from doing business in China until the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) falls or until the CCP radically reforms itself. Because there is no easy way out other than taking that band-aid and ripping it right off,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

“I am sorry Henry Kissinger. We are done with your experiment. In America, it is the only way out. We got to start thinking on the time scales of history, not the time scales of electoral cycles,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

Kissinger served as U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

“We do not need (Arthur Neville) Chamberlain, we need a little bit of (Winston) Churchill in this country. If you are willing to make a sacrifice, the chances are you will never have to make it because the other side will fall first,” Mr. Ramaswamy asserted.

Dismantling Department of Education

In his speech, Mr. Ramaswamy also called for dismantling the Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“I have already said last week, the first agency we will shut down and need to shut down in the United States is the U.S. Department of Education. It has no reason to exist. Never should have existed.

“And today, I am ready to announce the second government agency that I will shut down in this country we should have done this at least 60 years ago,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

It has hurt Republicans and Democrats alike, he added.

“We are going to get it done as finally, it is time to shut down the FBI in America and create something new to take its place because we are done with the J. Edgar Hoover legacy to let this be a self-governing nation again,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, referring to the American law-enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the FBI.

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Snow falls in Los Angeles area, 1,000s still without power

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A powerful winter storm that swept down the West Coast with flooding and frigid temperatures shifted its focus to southern California on Saturday, swelling rivers to dangerous levels and dropping snow in even low-lying areas around Los Angeles.

The National Weather Service said it was one of the strongest storms to ever hit southwest California and even as the volume of wind and rain dropped, it continued to have significant impact including snowfall down to elevations as low as 1,000 feet (305 metres). Hills around suburban Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, were blanketed in white, and snow also surprised inland suburbs to the east.

Rare blizzard warnings for the mountains and widespread flood watches were ending late in the day as the storm tapered off in the region. Forecasters said there would be a one-day respite before the next storm arrives on Monday.

After days of fierce winds, toppled trees and downed wires, more than 120,000 California utility customers remained without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us. And Interstate 5, the West Coast’s major north-south highway, remained closed due to heavy snow and ice in Tejon Pass through the mountains north of Los Angeles.

Multiday precipitation totals as of Saturday morning included a staggering 81 inches (205 centimetres) of snow at the Mountain High resort in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and up to 64 inches (160 centimetres) farther east at Snow Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Rainfall totals as of late Saturday morning were equally stunning, including nearly 15 inches (38.1 centimetres) at Los Angeles County’s Cogswell Dam and nearly 10.5 inches (26.6 cm) in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles.

“Quite a remarkable storm the last few days with historic amounts of precip and snow down to elevations that rarely see snow,” the LA-area weather office wrote.

The Los Angeles River and other waterways that normally flow at a trickle or are dry most of the year were raging with runoff Saturday. The Los Angeles Fire Department used a helicopter to rescue four homeless people who were stranded in the river’s major flood control basin. Two were taken to a hospital with hypothermia, said spokesperson Brian Humphrey.

In the Valencia area of north Los Angeles County, the roiling Santa Clara River carried away three motorhomes early Saturday after carving into an embankment where an RV park is located. No one was hurt, KCAL-TV reported, but one resident described the scene as devastating.

The storm, fueled by low pressure rotating off the coast, did not depart quietly. Lightning strikes shut down LA County beaches and scattered bursts of snow, showers and thunderstorms persisted.

Derek Maiden, 57, who lives in a tent in LA’s Echo Park neighbourhood, collected cans in the rain to take to a recycling center. He said this winter has been wetter than usual. “It’s miserable when you’re outside in the elements,” he said.

Meanwhile, people farther east were struggling to deal with the fallout from storms earlier this week.

More than 350,000 customers were without power in Michigan as of early Saturday afternoon, according to reports from the two main utilities in the state, DTE and Consumers Energy. Both said they hope to have the lights back on for most of their customers by Sunday night.

Brian Wheeler, a spokesman for Consumers Energy, said half an inch (1.27 centimetres) of ice weighed down some power lines — equivalent to the weight of a baby grand piano.

“People are not just angry but struggling,” said Em Perry, environmental justice director for Michigan United, a group that advocates for economic and racial justice. “People are huddling under blankets for warmth.”

She said the group will demand that utilities reimburse residents for the cost to purchase generators or replace spoiled groceries.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Allison Rinker was using a borrowed generator to keep her 150-year-old house warm Saturday after two nights in the cold and dark.

“We were all surviving, but spirits were low on the second day,” she said. “As soon as the heat came back and we were able to have one or two lights running, it was like a complete flip in attitude.”

After driving to a relative’s home to store food, Rinker, 27, compared the destruction of trees to tornado damage.

“The ice that was falling off the trees as it was melting was hitting our windshield so hard, I was afraid it was going to crack,” she said. “There’s just tree limbs everywhere, half of the trees just falling down. The destruction is insane.”

Back in California, the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service forecast heavy snow over the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada through the weekend.

The low-pressure system was also expected to bring widespread rain and snow in southern Nevada by Saturday afternoon and across northwest Arizona Saturday night and Sunday morning, the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas said.

An avalanche warning was issued for the Sierra Nevada backcountry around Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border. Nearly 2 feet (61 cm) of new snow had fallen by Friday and up to another 5 feet (1.5 metres) was expected when another storm moves in with the potential for gale-force winds and high-intensity flurries Sunday, the weather service said.

In Arizona, the heaviest snow was expected late Saturday through midday Sunday, with up to a foot of new snow possible in Flagstaff, forecasters said.

Weekend snow also was forecast for parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm was expected to reach the central high Plains by Sunday evening.

At least three people have died in the coast-to-coast storms. A Michigan firefighter died Wednesday after coming into contact with a downed power line, while in Rochester, Minnesota, a pedestrian died after being hit by a city-operated snowplow. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, said a person died of hypothermia.

Much of Portland was shut down with icy roads after the city’s second-heaviest snowfall on record this week: nearly 11 inches (28 centimetres). While the city saw sunny skies and temperatures approaching 40 degrees Saturday afternoon, the reprieve — and thaw — was short-lived. More snow was expected overnight and Sunday.

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Ukraine in mind, U.S. frantic to avert Mideast showdown at UN

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The Biden administration is scrambling to avert a diplomatic crisis over Israeli settlement activity this week at the United Nations that threatens to overshadow and perhaps derail what the U.S. hopes will be a solid five days of focus on condemning Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made two emergency calls on February 18 from the Munich Security Conference, which he is attending in an as-yet unsuccessful bid to avoid or forestall such a showdown. It remained unclear whether another last-minute intervention might salvage the situation, according to diplomats familiar with the ongoing discussions who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Without giving details, the State Department said in nearly identical statements that Mr. Blinken had spoken to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Munich to “reaffirm the U.S. commitment to a negotiated two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability”.

“The Secretary underscored the urgent need for Israelis and Palestinians to take steps that restore calm and our strong opposition to unilateral measures that would further escalate tensions,” the statements said.

Neither statement mentioned the proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate halt to Israeli settlements. The Palestinians want to bring that resolution to a vote on Monday. And neither statement gave any indication as to how the calls ended.

But diplomats familiar with the conversations said that in his call to Mr. Abbas, Mr. Blinken reiterated an offer to the Palestinians for a U.S. package of incentives to entice them to drop or at least delay the resolution.

Those incentives included a White House meeting for Mr. Abbas with President Joe Biden, movement on reopening the American consulate in Jerusalem and a significant aid package, the diplomats said.

Mr. Abbas was noncommittal, the diplomats said, but also suggested he would not be amenable unless the Israelis agreed to a six-month freeze on settlement expansion on land the Palestinians claim for a future state.

Mr. Blinken then called Mr. Netanyahu, who, according to the diplomats, was similarly noncommittal about the six-month settlement freeze. Mr. Netanyahu also repeated Israeli opposition to reopening the consulate, which was closed during President Donald Trump’s administration, they said.

Also Read | Explained | On the legality of Israel’s occupation

The U.S. and others were hoping to resolve the deadlock on Sunday, but the diplomats said it was unclear if that was possible.

Derailing Ukraine talks

The drama arose just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will be the subject of special U.N. General Assembly and Security Council sessions on Thursday and Friday.

The U.S. opposes the Palestinian resolution and is almost certain to veto it. Not vetoing would carry a considerable domestic political risk for Mr. Biden on the cusp of the 2024 presidential race and top House Republicans have already warned against it.

But the administration also fears that using its veto to protect Israel risks losing support at the world body for measures condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Senior officials from the White House, the State Department and the U.S. Mission to the U.N. have already engaged frantic but fruitless diplomacy to try to persuade the Palestinians to back down. The dire nature of the situation prompted Mr. Blinken’s calls on Saturday, the diplomats said.

The Biden administration has already said publicly that it does not support the resolution, calling it “unhelpful”. But it has also said the same about recent Israeli settlement expansion announcements.

U.N. diplomats say the U.S wants to replace the Palestinian resolution, which would be legally binding, with a weaker presidential statement, or at least delay a vote on the resolution until after the Ukraine war anniversary.

Palestinian push

The Palestinian push comes as Israel’s new right-wing government has reaffirmed its commitment to construct new settlements in the West Bank and expand its authority on land the Palestinians seek for a future state.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The United Nations and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements illegal and an obstacle to ending the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Ultranationalists who oppose Palestinian statehood comprise a majority of Israel’s new government, which has declared settlement construction a top priority.

The draft resolution, circulated by the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, would reaffirm the Security Council’s “unwavering commitment” to a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace as democratic states.

It would also reaffirm the U.N. Charter’s provision against acquiring territory by force and reaffirm that any such acquisition is illegal.

Last Tuesday, Mr. Blinken and the top diplomats from Britain, France, Germany and Italy condemned Israel’s plans to build 10,000 new homes in existing settlements in the West Bank and retroactively legalise nine outposts. Mr. Netanyahu’s Cabinet had announced the measure two days earlier, following a surge in violence in Jerusalem.

In December 2016, the Security Council demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”. It stressed that halting settlement activities “is essential for salvaging the two-state solution.”

That resolution was adopted after President Barack Obama’s administration abstained in the vote, a reversal of the United States’ longstanding practice of protecting its close ally Israel from action at the United Nations, including by vetoing Arab-supported resolutions.

The draft resolution before the council now is much shorter than the 2016 document, though it reiterates its key points and much of what the U.S. and Europeans already said last week.

Complicating the matter for the U.S., the Security Council resolution was introduced and is supported by the UAE, an Arab partner of the United States that has also normalised relations with Israel, even as it has taken a tepid stance on opposing Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

The U.S. will be looking to the UAE and other council members sympathetic to the Palestinians to vote in favour of resolutions condemning Russia for invading Ukraine and calling for a cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces.

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Afghanistan remains primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia: UN report

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Afghanistan remains the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia, with groups such as ISIL-K, Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan enjoying greater freedom of movement in the country owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy, a UN report has said.

The 31st report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (ISIL, Al-Qaida), was issued here on Tuesday.

The report said that Afghanistan remains the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia.

“It originates from groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant- Khorasan (ISIL-K), Al-Qaeda, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, as well as ETIM/TIP (Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement/Turkistan Islamic Party), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Group, Khatiba Imam al-Bukhari, Khatiba al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Jamaat Ansarullah and others. These groups enjoy greater freedom of movement in Afghanistan owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy,” the report said.

It said that ISIL-K portrays itself as the “primary rival” to the Taliban de facto administration, with its strategic focus on Afghanistan and beyond in the historical Khorasan region.

“Its main goal is to portray the Taliban as incapable of providing security in the country. By targeting diplomatic missions, ISIL-K seeks to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and neighbouring countries,” it said.

The report noted that the September 5 attack last year on the Russian Embassy in Kabul was the first against a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control; in December, ISIL-K claimed attacks against the Pakistan Embassy and a hotel that accommodated Chinese nationals.

“It also threatened to launch terrorist attacks against Chinese, Indian and Iranian embassies in Afghanistan. Apart from high-profile attacks, ISIL-K conducts low-level attacks nearly daily, causing fear in local communities, targeting Shia minorities to undermine Taliban Pashtun authority and challenging nascent security agencies,” the report said.

The 16th report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of Member States in countering the threat, issued last week, had also noted that ISIL-K threatened to launch terrorist attacks against the Embassies of India, Iran and China in Afghanistan and by targeting diplomatic missions, the terror group sought to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and UN Member States in the Central and South Asia region.

In June last year, India resumed its diplomatic presence in Kabul by deploying a technical team in its embassy in the Afghan capital, over 10 months after it pulled out its officials from the mission following the Taliban’s capture of power.

The reopening of the embassy had come after an Indian team led by senior Ministry of External Affairs official J.P. Singh had visited Kabul and met acting Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi and some other members of the Taliban dispensation.

“In order to closely monitor and coordinate the efforts of various stakeholders for the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance and in continuation of our engagement with the Afghan people, an Indian technical team has reached Kabul today and has been deployed in our embassy there,” the Ministry of External Affairs had said.

The report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team added that regional Member States estimated current ISIL-K strength at between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters, of whom approximately 200 were of Central Asian origin, but other Member States believed that number could be as much as 6,000.

Core ISIL-K cells are located primarily in the eastern Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan Provinces of Afghanistan, with a large cell active in Kabul and its environs. Smaller groups had been detected in the northern and north-eastern Badakhshan, Faryab, Jowzjan, Kunduz, Takhar and Balkh Provinces. Since Balkh is one of the most economically developed provinces in the north, it remained of primary interest to ISIL-K in terms of revenue generation.

“One Member State reported that ISIL-K had started smuggling narcotics, which was a new development,” it said.

Member States also reported no significant change in Al-Qaida’s strength since the previous report. Despite the announcement by the United States of the killing of Al Qaeda leader Aiman Al-Zawahiri, ties between Al-Qaida and the Taliban remain close, as underscored by the regional presence of Al-Qaida core leadership and affiliated groups, such as Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent.

“It was expected that Al-Qaida would remain in Afghanistan for the near future,” the report said. According to one Member State, Al-Qaida-linked Katiba Umer Farooq (Red Unit) was possibly being re-activated in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces following the return of Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, Al-Qaida’s operations commander who had been captured in Kunar Province in 2010. It also reported that he had resumed leadership after his release following the Taliban takeover.

Several Member States reported that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan had emboldened Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to escalate attacks against Pakistan. In November, TTP announced the end of the May ceasefire with the Government of Pakistan following the killing of two senior TTP commanders in Afghanistan.

According to one Member State, while there had been a decrease in attacks against Pakistani security forces in the early months of the ceasefire, that number had increased gradually as TTP consolidated its presence in Afghanistan.

In August, Abdul Wali Rakhib (alias Omar Khalid Khurasani), a founding member and military commander of TTP, was killed along with two other TTP leaders in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. He was reportedly succeeded by Mukarram Shah (alias Umar Khorasani), it said.

The ISIL-K magazine ‘Voice of Khorasan’ releases propaganda in Pashto, Persian, Tajik, Uzbek and Russian languages; recent outreach in Tajik and Uzbek was “noteworthy” following a man named Rashidov, an Uzbekistan national, joining the ISIL-K media wing.

“With the goal of recruiting from ethnic groups in the region and strengthening the group’s capabilities, ISIL-K had recruited Rashidov online while he was working in Finland as a labour migrant, before moving to Afghanistan, the report said.

It further noted that the propaganda of the Tablighi Jamaat movement in Kyrgyzstan, the only country in Central Asia where it is not banned, was spreading to neighbouring countries.

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Grief gives way to anger over Turkey’s earthquake response

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When Zafer Mahmut Boncuk’s apartment building collapsed in Turkey’s devastating earthquake, he discovered his 75-year-old mother was still alive — but pinned under the wreckage.

For hours, Mr. Boncuk frantically searched for someone in the ancient, devastated city of Antakya to help him free her. He was able to talk to her, hold her hand and give her water. Despite his pleas, however, no one came, and she died on Tuesday, the day after the quake.

Like many others in Turkey, his sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an unfair and ineffective response to the historic disaster that has killed tens of thousands of people there and in Syria.

Mr. Boncuk directed his anger at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially because she seemed so close to rescue but no one came. Her remains were finally removed on Sunday, nearly a week after the building collapsed. His father’s body is still in the rubble.

“What would happen if it was your own mother, dear Recep Tayyip Erdogan? What happened to being a world leader? Where are you? Where?” he screamed.

“I gave her water to drink, I cleared her face of rubble. I told her that I would save her. But I failed,” said Mr. Boncuk, 60. “The last time we spoke, I asked if I should help her drink some water. She said no, so I rubbed some water on her lips. Ten minutes later, she died.”

He blamed “ignorance and lack of information and care — that’s why my mother died in front of my eyes”.

‘No one came’

Many in Turkey express similar frustration that rescue operations have been painfully slow since the February 6 quakes and that valuable time was lost during the narrow window for finding people alive.

Others, particularly in southern Hatay province near the Syrian border, say Mr. Erdogan’s government was late in delivering assistance to the hardest-hit region for what they suspect are both political and religious reasons.

In the southeastern town of Adiyaman, Elif Busra Ozturk waited outside the wreckage of a building on Saturday where her uncle and aunt were trapped and believed dead, and where the bodies of two of her cousins already had been found.

“For three days, I waited outside for help. No one came. There were so few rescue teams that they could only intervene in places they were sure there were people alive,” she said.


Also Read | 2-month-old baby found among other ‘miracle rescues’ as Turkey-Syria earthquake deaths pass 28,000

At the same complex, Abdullah Tas, 66, said he had been sleeping in a car near the building where his son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren were buried. He said that rescuers had first arrived four days after the earthquake struck. The Associated Press could not independently verify his claim.

“What good is that for the people under the debris?” he asked.

Onlookers stood behind police tape on Saturday in Antakya as bulldozers clawed at a high-rise luxury apartment building that had toppled onto its side.

Over 1,000 residents had been in the 12-story building when the quake struck, according to relatives watching the recovery effort. They said hundreds were still inside but complained the effort to free them had been slow and not serious.

“This is an atrocity, I don’t know what to say,” said Bediha Kanmaz, 60. The bodies of his son and 7-month-old grandson had been pulled from the building — still locked in an embrace — but his daughter-in-law was still inside.

“We open body bags to see if they’re ours, we’re checking if they’re our children. We’re even checking the ones that are torn to pieces,” she said of herself and other grief-stricken relatives.

Low priority for government

Ms. Kanmaz also blamed Turkey’s government for the slow response, and accused the national rescue service of failing to do enough to recover people alive.

She and others in Antakya expressed the belief that the presence of a large minority of Alevis — an Anatolian Islamic community that differs from Sunni and Shia Islam and Alawites in Syria — had made them a low priority for the government. Traditionally, few Alevis vote for Erdogan’s ruling party. There was no evidence, however, that the region was overlooked for sectarian reasons.

Contractors detained

Mr. Erdogan said on Wednesday that disaster efforts were continuing in all 10 affected provinces and dismissed allegations of no help from state institutions like the military as “lies, fake slander”.

But he has acknowledged shortcomings. Officials said rescue efforts in Hatay were initially complicated by the destruction of the local airport’s runway and bad road conditions.

Anger over the extent of the destruction, however, is not limited to individuals. Turkish authorities have been detaining or issuing detention warrants for dozens of people allegedly involved in the construction of buildings that collapsed, and the Justice Minister has vowed to punish those responsible.

Ms. Kanmaz blamed negligence on the part of the developer of the apartment building where her family had been killed.

“If I could wrap my hands around the contractor’s neck, I would tear him to shreds,” she said.

That contractor, who oversaw the construction of the 250-unit building, was detained at Istanbul Airport on Friday before boarding a flight out of the country, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported. On Saturday, he was formally arrested. His lawyer suggested the public was looking for a scapegoat.

Sparse resources as Syrian refugees pour in

In multiethnic southern Turkey, other tensions are rising. Some expressed frustration that Syrian refugees who fled to the region from their devastating civil war are burdening the sparse welfare system and competing for resources with Turkish people.

Also Read | How long can people survive in the rubble of an earthquake?

“There are many poor people in Hatay, but they don’t offer us any welfare; they give it to the Syrians. They give so much to the Syrians,” Ms. Kanmaz said. “There are more Syrians than Turks here.”

There were signs on Saturday the tensions could be boiling over.

Two German aid groups and the Austrian Armed Forces temporarily interrupted their rescue work in the Hatay region citing fears for the safety of their staff. They resumed work after the Turkish army secured the area, the Austrian Defense Ministry spokesman tweeted.

“There is increasing tension between different groups in Turkey,” Lt. Col. Pierre Kugelweis of the Austrian Armed Forces told the APA news agency. “Shots have reportedly been fired.”

German news agency dpa reported that Steven Berger, chief of operations of the aid group I.S.A.R. Germany, said that “it can be seen that grief is slowly giving way to anger” in Turkey’s affected regions.

For Ms. Kanmaz, it was a mixture of grief and anger.

“I’m angry. Life is over,” she said. “We live for our children; what matters most to us is our children. We exist if they exist. Now we are over. Everything you see here is over.”

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Rescuers scramble in Turkey, Syria after earthquake kills 4,000

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Rescuers in Turkey and war-ravaged Syria searched through the frigid night into Tuesday, hoping to pull more survivors from the rubble after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 4,000 people and toppled thousands of buildings across a wide region.

Authorities feared the death toll from Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake and aftershocks would keep climbing as rescuers looked for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.

Survivors cried out for help from within mountains of debris as first responders contended with rain and snow. Seismic activity continued to rattle the region, including another jolt nearly as powerful as the initial quake.

Workers carefully pulled away slabs of concrete and reached for bodies as desperate families waited for news of loved ones.

“My grandson is 1 1/2 years old. Please help them, please. … They were on the 12th floor,” Imran Bahur wept by her destroyed apartment building in the Turkish city of Adana on Monday.

Also Read | Why Turkey is prone to devastating earthquakes?

Tens of thousands who were left homeless in Turkey and Syria faced a night in the cold. In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, a provincial capital about 33 kilometres (20 miles) from the epicentre, people took refuge in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centres.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared seven days of national mourning.

US President Joe Biden called Erdogan to express condolences and offer assistance to the NATO ally. The White House said it was sending search-and-rescue teams to support Turkey’s efforts.

The quake, which was centred in Turkey’s southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents of Damascus and Beirut rushing into the street and was felt as far away as Cairo.

It piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade. On the Syrian side, the area is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the civil war.

In the rebel-held enclave, hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, the opposition emergency organisation known as the White Helmets said in a statement. The area is packed with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the war. Many live in buildings that are already wrecked from military bombardments.

Strained medical centres quickly filled with injured people, rescue workers said. Some facilities had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organisation.

More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority.

The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.

The US Geological Survey measured Monday’s quake at 7.8, with a depth of 18 kilometres (11 miles). Hours later, a 7.5 magnitude temblor, likely triggered by the first, struck more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) away.

The second jolt caused a multistory apartment building in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa to topple onto the street in a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, according to video of the scene.

Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria’s cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometres (200 miles) to the northeast.

In Turkey alone, more than 5,600 buildings were destroyed, authorities said. Hospitals were damaged, and one collapsed in the city of Iskenderun.

Bitterly cold temperatures could reduce the time frame that rescuers have to save trapped survivors, said Dr. Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University. The difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war would further complicate rescue efforts, he said.

Offers of help — from search-and-rescue teams to medical supplies and money — poured in from dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO. The vast majority were for Turkey, with a Russian and even an Israeli promise of help to the Syrian government, but it was not clear if any would go to the devastated rebel-held pocket in the northwest.

The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense described the situation in the enclave as “disastrous.” The opposition-held area, centred on the province of Idlib, has been under siege for years, with frequent Russian and government airstrikes. The territory depends on a flow of aid from Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said 224 buildings in northwestern Syrian were destroyed and at least 325 were damaged, including aid warehouses. The U.N. had been assisting 2.7 million people each month via cross-border deliveries, which could now be disrupted.

At a hospital in Idlib, Osama Abdel Hamid said most of his neighbours died when their shared four-story building collapsed. As he fled with his wife and three children, a wooden door fell on them, shielding them from falling debris.

“God gave me a new lease on life,” he said.

In the small Syrian rebel-held town of Azmarin in the mountains by the Turkish border, the bodies of several dead children, wrapped in blankets, were brought to a hospital.

In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, and one could be seen lying on a stretcher on the snowy ground. Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk said a woman was pulled out alive in Gaziantep after a rescue dog detected her.

In Adana, 20 or so people, some in emergency rescue jackets, used power saws atop the concrete mountain of a collapsed building to open up space for any survivors to climb out or be rescued.

“I don’t have the strength anymore,” one survivor could be heard calling out from beneath the rubble of another building in Adana as rescue workers tried to reach him, said Muhammet Fatih Yavuz, a local resident.

In Diyarbakir, hundreds of rescue workers and civilians formed lines across a huge mound of wreckage, passing down broken concrete pieces and household belongings as they searched for trapped survivors.

At least 2,921 people were killed in 10 Turkish provinces, with nearly 16,000 injured, according to Turkish authorities.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed to 656 people, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. In the country’s rebel-held northwest, groups that operate there said at least 450 people died, with many hundreds injured.

Huseyin Yayman, a legislator from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several of his family members were stuck under the rubble of their collapsed homes.

“There are so many other people who are also trapped,” he told HaberTurk television by phone. “There are so many buildings that have been damaged. People are on the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.”

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