ADIYAMAN, Turkey, Feb 10, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip 
Erdogan admitted for the first time Friday that his government's search and 
rescue effort from this week's devastating earthquake did not go as quickly 
as hoped.

Erdogan has faced criticism from the quake's survivors about an insufficient 
number of rescuers and humanitarian aid being delivered in the first days of 
Turkey's biggest disaster in nearly a century.

The death toll from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor has surpassed 22,000 across 
southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

Nearly 19,000 of those deaths happened in Turkey.

Erdogan repeated an earlier admission that there had been "shortcomings" in 
his government's response.

But he appeared to go one step further by conceding that his teams could have 
responded more quickly.

"So many buildings were damaged that unfortunately, we were not able to speed 
up our interventions as quickly as we had desired," Erdogan said during a 
visit to the hard-hit southern city of Adiyaman.

He said rescuers had been slowed by a winter storm over the area that had 
made some roads impassable.

"Moreover, most public workers who would have conducted the first 
intervention and organisation were themselves under the collapsed buildings," 
Erdogan said.

He added that Turkey had now gathered "perhaps the world's largest search and 
rescue team" comprised of 141,000 across 10 affected provinces.

The Turkish leader also fired back at his critics heading into a crunch 
election the government plans for May 14.

Secular opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu this week blamed the huge number 
of buildings that toppled in the termor and its aftershock on state-connected 
"profiteers" who were not following proper construction codes.

Erdogan called out "opportunists who want to turn this pain into their 
political gain".

He also promised to rebuild the damaged region within a year.