Turkey’s emergency services have rescued seven people, including a seven-month-old baby, overnight Saturday after they were buried under rubble for more than 140 hours following Monday’s earthquakes in the south of the country near the Syrian border.
A seven-month-old baby has been found in the city of Antioch in Hatay province 140 hours after the start of the earthquake, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported.
Also, rescuers have been able to pull a woman, who is pregnant, her brother and one other person from the rubble in the same province.
In addition, a 13-year-old girl was rescued in the city of Gaziantep after 133 hours.
In Onikisubat district, Kahramanmarash province, emergency teams found a 26-year-old man who was rescued from the rubble of an eleven-story building, as reported by the same agency.
Meanwhile, the Turkish newspaper ‘Daily Sabah’ has reported the rescue of a sixth person, a four-year-old girl, in Sengul, in southeastern Turkey.
On the seventh day since the earthquakes, emergency services continue to search for live people to rescue, a task that becomes more difficult with each passing hour, since the standard time that a human being can remain without food or water intake in disasters like this is 72 hours.
According to the latest official balance sheet on Saturday provided by the Turkish Vice President, Fuat Oktay, at least 24,617 people have died in Turkey alone, where the number of injured is 80,278 people. In neighboring Syria, 3,553 people are reported dead and 5,276 injured, for a total of 28,170 deaths.
Meanwhile, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, has already expressed his fear this Saturday that the final death toll from the earthquakes may end up exceeding 50,000 once the actual count of victims begins.
The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), under the Turkish Interior Ministry, has indicated that nearly 160,000 search and rescue team members — including international teams and NGOs — are working in the affected areas. Large quantities of rescue equipment, meals, basic necessities and psychosocial support groups have been sent to the region.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
