Damage caused by a devastating earthquake in Turkey will exceed $100 billion, a U.N. Development Programme official told a press briefing on Tuesday ahead of a major donor conference next week.
"It's clear from the calculations being done to date that the damage figure presented by the government and supported by...international partners would be in excess of $100 billion," said the UNDP's Louisa Vinton, by video link from Gaziantep.
More than 52,000 people were killed in Turkey and Syria by the February 6 earthquakes, with many being crushed or buried in their sleep.
The provisional damage figure, which Vinton said covers just Turkey, is being used as a basis for a donor conference to mobilise funds for earthquake victims in Brussels, Belgium on March 16, she added.
The World Bank previously estimated the Turkey damage at around $34.2 billion.
Vinton described the scenes in Turkey's worst-hit Hatay province as "apocalyptic", saying hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed. "The needs are vast but the resources are scarce," she added.
Israel bombarded northern Gaza overnight in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, causing panic amongst residents and flattening neighbourhoods in an area from which the Israeli army had previously down its troops, residents said on Tuesday.
Russia launched a drone attack on Ukraine that injured seven people in the Black Sea port of Odesa, two of them children, and also targeted Kyiv, the capital, Ukraine's military officials said early on Tuesday.
A Delhi court on Tuesday extended the pre-trial detention of Indian opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal until May 7 in a corruption case, the legal news website Live Law reported.
Taiwan's quake-hit eastern county of Hualien was rattled by more than 200 aftershocks late on Monday and early on Tuesday, but only minor damage was reported and no casualties and major chipmaker TSMC said it saw no impact on operations.