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At least five survivors were rescued on Tuesday from the rubble of an earthquake-hit region of Turkey, local media reported, eight days after the worst earthquake in the country’s modern history.
A woman and a man were pulled from the rubble in the southern city of Hatay, about 204 hours after the quake hit the region and parts of northwestern Syria, Turkish media said.
Earlier on Tuesday, an 18-year-old boy named Muhammed Cafer was rescued from the rubble of a building in southern Turkey about 198 hours after last Monday’s earthquake, broadcaster CNN Turk said.
In Turkey’s Adiyman province, broadcasters showed rescue workers carrying Cafer strapped to a stretcher, an oxygen mask over his face and a health worker holding an IV bag, from the site of a collapsed building to a waiting ambulance.
Cafer was seen moving his fingers as he was carried.
WATCH | Teenagers were pulled from the rubble in separate rescues Tuesday:
An 18-year-old boy from Adiyaman, Turkey, and a 17-year-old boy from Kahramanmaras have been pulled to safety by rescue teams after being trapped for more than a week under a collapsed building following last week’s earthquake.
Earlier, rescue workers pulled two brothers alive from the rubble of an apartment block in the neighboring province of Kahramanmaras.
State-owned Anadolu news agency identified them as 17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and his brother, 21-year-old Baki Yeninar, who were rescued after him.
Both were placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. The situation is unclear.
‘We will start from zero’
Other survivors joined the mass exodus from Turkey’s quake zone on Tuesday, some leaving their homes with no hope of returning or seeing loved ones pulled from the rubble, as several rescue teams left.
“It is very difficult.… We will start from zero, without goods, without work,” said Hamza Bekry, 22, a Syrian originally from Idlib who has lived in Hatay, in southern Turkey, for 12 years.
“Our house was completely destroyed. Many of our relatives died. There are still some under the rubble,” he continued, as he prepared to leave his family for Isparta in southern Turkey.
WATCH | Survivor makes a banging sound after the sound goes hoarse:
A woman in Turkey whose rescue was captured by CBC News cameras is now recovering in hospital after being trapped in the rubble of the earthquake for nearly five days. His family is grateful, and doctors say he was rescued just in time.
He will be one of more than 158,000 people who have fled a large swath of southern Turkey hit by the quake, one of the largest in the region’s modern history.
The disaster, with the death toll in neighboring Turkey and Syria now exceeding 37,000, has devastated entire cities in both countries, leaving survivors homeless in the cold, and sometimes sleeping in piles of rubble.
“I don’t have much hope for this life, but the lives of our children are important,” said Riza Atahan, from Hatay, as he put his wife and daughter on a bus to safety some 300 kilometers away.
Dozens of residents and first responders voiced their dismay at the lack of water, food, medicine, body bags and cranes in the disaster zone in the first days after the quake.
“People don’t die because of earthquakes, they die because of precautions they didn’t take before,” said Said Qudsi who lost his uncle, aunt and two sons in the quake.
Turkey’s Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said 42,000 buildings were collapsed, in need of demolition or severely damaged in 10 cities.
Saving Syria is becoming less likely
In the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Monday that the rescue phase was “coming to a close,” with the focus being on shelter, food and schools as low temperatures reduced the chances of survival.
In a public playground in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Syrian refugees left homeless by the quake are using plastic sheets, blankets, cardboard and broken furniture to set up makeshift tents on the grass.
“People are suffering a lot. We applied to receive tents, help or something else but so far we have not received anything,” said Hassan Saimoua, a refugee who lives with his family in the playground.
The search for survivors will end in opposition-held northwest Syria eight days after the quake, the head of the White Helmets main rescue group, Raed al Saleh, said.
“The indications are that there is none [survivors] but we try to do a final check on all sites,” he said.
Russia also said it was completing search and rescue work in Turkey and Syria and preparing to withdraw from the disaster zone.
Turkey’s death toll stands at 31,974, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said on Tuesday. More than 5,814 have been killed in Syria, according to Reuters reports from Syrian state media and UN agencies.
LISTENING | For Syrian refugees, the earthquake exacerbated an already precarious situation:
Day 68:29 a.mFor Syrian refugees, the devastating earthquake worsened an already precarious situation
More than 20,000 people were killed in an earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday. It was the deadliest to hit Turkey since 1939 and resulted in one of the world’s largest refugee populations. There are millions of displaced Syrians living on both sides of the border between Turkey and Syria where the earthquake hit hardest. Zaina Erhaim is a Syrian journalist who spent time as a refugee in southern Turkey. His mother was in southern Turkey at the time of the earthquake.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections scheduled for June that are expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, acknowledged problems in his initial response but said the situation was now under control.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to allow UN aid to enter from Turkey through two more border crossings last Friday, the world body said, in a move that could help people in northwestern Syria.
So far, the lack of aid compared to government-controlled areas has led to widespread anger among those living in the area who feel they have been left alone.
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