A two-year-old child was pulled out of the rubble of a dilapidated building. turkey78 hours after the earthquake that devastated many parts of the country.
The child was rescued from the rubble of a four-story apartment building in Odabasi district of Antakya city. A Romanian and Polish rescue team worked a small gap between some broken concrete and rescued the crying boy.
The child, identified as Mehmet Tatar, was handed over to health workers and put into an ambulance to be taken for a medical examination. Tears of joy welled up from the rescue team at the unlikely survival of the boy.
Emergency crews working overnight in Antakya were able to rescue a young girl, Hajal Guner, from the ruins of a building, and her father Soner Guner, news agency IHA reported. As they prepared to put the man in an ambulance, rescuers told them that their daughter was alive and they were taking her to the same field hospital for treatment. “I love you all,” she whispered faintly to the rescuers.
Elsewhere, a woman was rescued from the rubble of an apartment building in the Turkish city of Malatya, about 250 miles north of Odabasi, which was trapped since the first earthquake that struck early Monday, measuring 7.8.
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Meral Nakir, 60, was pulled from the first floor of the six-storey building with the help of rescue dog Kopuk. The dog responded to the calls being made by Ms Nakir, allowing a rescue team from the disaster management agency AFAD to get in touch.
After clearing the debris for more than 20 hours – with soldiers, police, medical teams, AFAD, the fire brigade and health teams all taking part in the effort – a hole was then drilled in the area where Ms Nakir was trapped Had happened After being carried to safety by volunteers, he was taken by ambulance to a hospital for medical treatment.
In all, Kopuk – who was brought by van to the city of Malatya more than 300 miles away – has so far helped rescue six people, four of whom were from the same building.
Mehmet Tatar was found in the ruins of an apartment block
(DHA)
Abdulalim Muaini, whose leg got stuck under the concrete, was extricated from Hatay late on Tuesday night after hours of struggle to free him. Mr. Muaini is of Syrian origin from Homs. an area that also felt the destructive power Earthquake Reuters reported that he had fled the Syrian civil war and married Esra, a Turkish woman. The couple had two daughters, Mahsen and Besira. When he was finally pulled from the wreckage, three bodies wrapped in blankets lay nearby. Esra, Mahsen, and Bezira were all dead.
combined death toll in Turkey and Syria The death toll neared 20,000 on Thursday evening as rescue hopes faded as the 72-hour window passed. However, the search continues on Friday as well.
DFAD said the death toll in Turkey had risen to 17,134.
Meral Nakir, 60, being rescued in Malatya, Turkey, 77 hours after the earthquake
(DHA)
In the devastated Syrian town of Jandaris, Ibrahim Khalil Menqueen walks the rubble-strewn streets clutching a folded white body bag. He said he had lost seven members of his family, including his wife and two brothers.
“I’m holding this bag when they bring out my brother and my brother’s young son and his two wives, so we can pack them in the bag,” he told Reuters. “The situation is very bad. And there is no help.
Syria’s infrastructure has been ravaged by a long-running civil war, hampering relief efforts after the natural disaster. Several towns in the opposition-held northwest have faced years of bombardment from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
“There are a lot of people under the rubble, there is no heavy equipment to pull them out and the volunteers have not been able to work with light equipment,” Tausif Nahas, a resident of Salqeen in northwestern Syria, told Reuters.
The first UN aid truck to enter rebel-held territory since the earthquake arrived from Turkey on Thursday morning.
The devastation in the northwestern governorates of Hama, Latakia, Idlib, Aleppo and Tartus has affected 10.9 million people, said El-Mustafa Benlamlih, the senior UN assistance official in Syria.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pushed for more humanitarian access to northwest Syria, saying he would be “very happy” if the UN could use more than one border crossing to deliver aid.
The Syrian government views the delivery of aid from Turkey to rebel-held territory as a violation of its sovereignty.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, there have been many complaints about a lack of equipment and expertise to rescue people trapped in the ruins. The main street of the Turkish city of Antakya was also packed with traffic, as residents who had managed to find scarce gasoline sought to leave the disaster area and aid trucks made their way to the area.
Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area stretching some 280 miles from Adana in the west to Diyarbakır in the east. In Syria, people were killed as far south as Hama, more than 100 miles from the epicenter.