Old Iraqi woman donates her disability pension to earthquake victims in Türkiye

By Rewa Mahmood Hasan and Bekir Aydogan

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq (AA) – An old woman living in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah province donated her disability pension to those affected by the last week's earthquakes in Türkiye.

Khorshid Hussein Mohammed, 75, who lives in the town of Barda Qaraman, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city center, did not forget the people affected by the earthquake disaster in southern Türkiye, despite the illness and poverty she has been going through herself.

Khorshid told Anadolu that she was born in 1948 in the village of Bargurdi in the district of Mawat and had to leave her village in 1989 due to oppression by the Baath regime.

Recalling the time she lived in a camp, Khorshid said when she saw the disaster in Türkiye on television channels, she remembered her own hard days when she left the village and remained homeless.

Khorshid said that when she heard that an aid campaign for the earthquake victims had started in Sulaymaniyah, she immediately decided to go to the city center.

“I took with me 50,000 Iraqi dinars (nearly 645 Turkish liras) of my disability pension and some clothes,” she said.

“Despite my illness, I went to Sulaymaniyah by taxi. It was raining, and I couldn't sleep that night,” Khorshid noted.

“My heart was beating with excitement, and I was crying on my way to the campaign area,” she added.

At least 31,643 people were killed by two strong earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye on Feb. 6, the country's disaster agency said on Monday.

Magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes, centered in the Kahramanmaras province, affected more than 13 million people across 10 provinces, including Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye and Sanliurfa.

Several countries in the region, including Syria and Lebanon, also felt the strong tremors that struck Türkiye in the space of less than 10 hours.

*Writing by Zehra Nur Duz