Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana’s honorary consulate in Turkey has confirmed the safety of Batswana residing there following the devastating February 6 earthquakes which have so far claimed in excess of 30 000 lives.
This is according to an official of Botswana’s embassy to Swiss Confideration, Ms Mpho Mogobe who said the safety of the 18 Batswana known to be living in Turkey had been ascertained.
“On the morning of the earthquake, the mission contacted all Batswana in Turkey that have registered with the embassy to find out whether they were safe and how they were doing,” she said in an interview with BOPA yesterday.
Ms Mogobe, whose accreditation covers Austria, Greece and Turkey said 15 of them were mostly self-sponsored tertiary-level students.
She said through the cohort the embassy learnt of three more Batswana staying in the affected areas.
“We discovered they were actually moving to safer places, being Ankara and Istanbul,” she said.
Turkish ambassador, Mr Idem Akay, who only recently started his tour of duty, said the embassy had deferred travel of other Batswana students to Turkey following the earthquakes.
He said the students had been admitted at Gaziantep University to study food engineering unfortunately the institution was located in one of the regions greatly affected by the earthquakes.
“Already Gaziantep University has managed to contact the respective students enrolled to delay their travel to Turkey until the situation calms down,” he said.
Mr Akay said the death toll from the back-to-back earthquakes which occurred in the south-eastern part of Turkey had surpassed 30 000 with about 80 000 injuries adding that the statistics were expected to rise given the magnitude clocked.
“We are following the developments closely. Unfortunately, Turkey has had an experience with earthquakes, but this one is serious,” he said.
Until last week, Turkey’s last serious earthquake had been in 1999 which resulted in the death of more than 18 000 people, he said.
Ambassador Akay said about 50 countries had already responded to Turkey’s appeal for assistance by sending rescue teams and humanitarian aid.
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