A Turkish charity organization filed a criminal complaint on Friday in the name of orphans and lost children it claimed have been victims of human trafficking in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit the country and Syria on February 6.
The group, Önce Çocuklar ve Kadınlar Derneği , alleged that cults and other nefarious actors were capitalizing on the large number of abandoned, orphaned, or otherwise unaccompanied children the Turkish government has yet to take in its custody in the wake of the earthquakes.
As of Friday, Turkish and Syrian authorities have confirmed over 44,000 deaths in the earthquakes, more than 38,000 of them in Turkey. Much of northwest Syria is not under the control of dictator Bashar Assad, falling instead to Syrian Kurdish organizations and jihadist militias, making it much more difficult to assess the total damage there. According to the Qatari outlet
According to a statement published by the Children and Women First Association, it had identified members of “religious sects” and other unauthorized institutions presenting themselves as relatives of unaccompanied children and taking them from shelters or other government areas.
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