Turkey earthquake: Satellite images reveal extent of mass graves at rural cemetery
We knew the name of the village with the location pinpointed on our mobile phones, but we did not need a map to find a place called Kapicam.
Instead, we simply followed the traffic.
This unassuming community is located just south of the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, and hosts a couple of shops, a guest house and a cemetery where local residents are laid to rest.
But the track to the cemetery was jammed with ambulances and private cars and vans belonging to the regional municipality.
Each vehicle contained dead bodies – some wrapped in thick black plastic – others contained in bright green boxes, stacked inside.
Satellite image taken on 8 February shows a large convoy of vehicles arriving at the cemetery grounds. Pic: Maxar
This peaceful spot, nestled amidst the pine trees, had been turned into a factory for processing the dead – and the size of the operation was staggering.
With the death toll from two powerful earthquakes last month in Turkey now standing at approximately 45,000, many of those who lost their lives will be buried here in Kapicam.
The original plot, with a small number of white tomb stones, had been engulfed by recent activity.
Industrial excavators were digging trenches in every section of the cemetery’s hillside location – and in the distance, we saw a long row of tents erected on the top of the hill.
These tents form something of a reception centre for the sad procession of vehicles edging their way into the cemetery.
Tents being erected at the grave site are seen in a satellite image from 11 February. Pic: Maxar
Groups of volunteers and local officials waited outside each pavilion, retrieving the bodies and taking them inside.
The dead were washed and wrapped in clean linen – as religious ritual requires – and placed in wooden containers which were stacked up outside. Then, they were carried off to newly-dug graves.
We saw hundreds of grief-stricken relatives on the site, accompanying their loved ones as they were placed at the bottom of freshly prepared trenches.
The body of each victim is marked with a plain wooden board with a simple grave marker, with the name of the individual written in black ink.
In three days a large number of graves have been dug at the cemetery site. Pic: Maxar, 11 February
Lines of trenches with some measuring almost 100 metres have been dug at the rural site. Pic: Maxar
“I came here because my neighbours died in the rubble,” said a man called Mustafa who stopped to have a word with us.
“How many died,” I asked.
“I think, 28, yes 28 (of my neighbours),” he said.
“Do you know where they have been buried?” I asked.
“No, I don’t. But I needed to come here anyway.”
Many bodies at Kapicam have not been identified. The simple wooden memorials have been given numbers, scrawled in black ink, but there is nothing else to commemorate the victims’ time on earth.
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Much is now known about the scale of the disaster in Turkey. For example, 160,000 buildings containing 520,000 apartments have collapsed or were severely damaged.
But the authorities have been unable – or unwilling – to provide an estimate of the number of people still missing. Most think that number will run into the tens of thousands.
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Turkey’s ‘Disaster and Emergency Management Authority’ (AFAD) says that it is recording victims’ fingerprints and taking DNA samples – but the country lacks a clear procedure enabling loved ones to trace missing relatives.
The fate of Syrian refugees missing in the disaster is particularly pronounced for Turkey as it currently hosts millions of Syrians sheltering from civil war. Many of those refugees consumed in the rubble may never be identified.
Satellite pictures obtained by Sky News reveal how Kapicam’s rural cemetery has grown dramatically in just a few days. Yet it is only one of many sites in Turkey that now serve as makeshift resting places for those who were killed in the earthquakes.
Four weeks after the disaster, the authorities cannot say how many people were killed. However, one afternoon in this sorrowful spot says much about the scale of the tragedy.
Additional reporting by Adam Parker, OSINT editor, and Michael Greenfield, international producer
Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.
Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.
His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Gaza latest: UK calls out Israel for ‘manmade catastrophe’
Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.
A child attempts to access food from a charity kitchen in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters
But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident. The report dismissed as wholly inaccurate, based on biased, inaccurate data and influenced not by fact, but by the whims of Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees humanitarian efforts in Gaza, claimed the IPC had ignored its data and presented a “one-sided report”, before claiming that “hundreds of truckloads of aid are still awaiting collection by the UN and international organisations”.
What is so striking is that there is no grey area between these two versions.
In one, Israel has obstructed the delivery of aid and allowed hunger to turn into famine; in the other, it is Hamas that has caused the crisis by stealing aid and exploiting hunger as a political tool to try to win global sympathy.
People in Beit Lahia take sacks of flour from an aid convoy en route to Gaza City. Pic: AP
Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, so we are reliant on the work of colleagues who live there.
But the images are striking – emaciated people holding begging bowls, people scrambling towards aid drops or clambering over trucks carrying bags of flour. And all around them, shattered buildings.
Aid is continuing to be dropped by air, but humanitarian groups say it is not enough. Pic: Reuters
We heard from a man in his 70s, who used to weigh 70kg, but who has lost almost half his body weight.
“Now, because of malnutrition, my weight has dropped to just 40,” Hassan Abu Seble said. “I suffered both a stroke and a heart attack. They had to put in a stent to help me recover, and I thank God that my organs are still functioning.”
The Israeli government, and many across the country, will maintain that Hamas bears the responsibility for everything that has happened to Gazans – that it was the attack on 7 October, 2023, that was the sole precipitant for the suffering, death and hunger that has followed.
But from around much of the rest of the world, the condemnation is deafening, accusing Israel of allowing famine to fester.
The body of a child is carried from the scene of an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Pic: AP
David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the Israeli government had caused a “man-made famine” by blocking the distribution of aid, and described that as a “moral outrage”.
The question, as so often before, is what that rhetoric leads to. And, so long as the United States doesn’t join the chorus of disapproval, does widespread global disapproval mean anything?
There is also a question now of Gaza’s future.
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In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, we found a large sign that says “Make Gaza Jewish Again”. It is a slogan, and a sentiment, that is supported by plenty.
“Yes, of course I agree,” says one man as he walks past, carrying a large pack of drinks. It turns out that he used to live in a Jewish settlement in Gaza until it was shut by the Israeli government two decades ago, but he has never stopped believing that Gaza is rightly Israel’s property.
“The people there now – they should leave. They could go to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. It is our land. And yes, I would like to go back there.”
He did not believe there was a famine. “They have lots of food,” he told me.
Another man, Avraham, was more conciliatory, but insisted there had never been a country like Israel “that is fighting a war against a country but is also sending in so much humanitarian aid for the people”.
Gaza City is now the focal point of so much. Famine is spreading from this heart just as troops prepare to encircle the city. A ceasefire could come, but so could a huge military assault. And all the while, the hunger will get worse.
Approval of a huge new Chinese embassy in London has been delayed by the government over redacted areas on the embassy’s plans.
Beijing hasn’t fully explained why there are blacked-out areas in its planning application after housing minister Angela Rayner demanded an explanation earlier this month.
The government has now delayed its decision over whether construction can go ahead from 9 September to 21 October, saying it needed more time to consider the application.
The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the delay and said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.
“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” said the embassy in a statement.
Site of planned Chinese embassy
Royal Mint Court, the site of the proposed embassy. File pic: PA
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans.
It added that additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out.
Protests have been held outside the proposed site. File pic: Feb 2025, PA
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” said DP9 in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
The embassy, which would be the largest in Europe, is planned for the 216-year-old site of the old Royal Mint Court next to the Tower of London.
However, opposition from local residents, lawmakers and pro-democracy campaigners means planning approval has been delayed for the past three years.
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Earlier this month, the embassy described claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s
national security as “despicable slandering”.
However, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has ties to a network of politicians critical of the country, called the explanations “far from satisfactory”.
Luke de Pulford, who is a long-standing critic of the embassy plans, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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