Miracle rescues continue

GBNEWS24DESK//

Rescuers pulled more survivors from the rubble a week after an earthquake struck Turkey and Syria leaving more than 35,000 dead, as the UN warned the toll was set to rise far higher.

A young boy and a 62-year-old woman were the latest miracle rescues after nearly seven days trapped under the wreckage of collapsed buildings since last Monday’s devastating quake.

Seven-year-old Mustafa was rescued in southeast Turkey’s Hatay province while Nafize Yilmaz was pulled free in Nurdagi, also in Hatay, the Anadolu state news agency reported early yesterday. Both had been trapped for 163 hours before their rescue late Sunday.

Turkey’s disaster agency said more than 32,000 people from Turkish organisations were working on search-and-rescue efforts, along with 8,294 international rescuers.

A member of a British search team posted a remarkable video on Twitter on Sunday showing a rescuer crawling down a tunnel created through the rubble to find a Turkish man who had been trapped for five days in Hatay.

Search teams are facing a race against the clock as experts caution that hopes for finding people alive in the debris dim with each passing day.

In the devastated Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre of the quake, excavators dug through mountains of twisted rubble as a rescue team recovered a body from the wreckage.

But in many areas, rescue teams said they lacked sensors and advanced search equipment, leaving them reduced to carefully digging through the rubble with shovels or only their hands.

“If we had this kind of equipment, we would have saved hundreds of lives, if not more,” said Alaa Moubarak, head of civil defence in Jableh, northwest Syria.