Turkish Girl Found Alive under Wrecked Building 28 Hours after Quake (+Video)


Turkish Girl Found Alive under Wrecked Building 28 Hours after Quake (+Video)

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A two-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble after more than 28 hours trapped with her mother following the 6.8-magnitude quake in Turkey which killed 35 and injured 1,600.

Rescue teams continued to pull survivors from collapsed buildings on Sunday, more than a day and a half after the powerful earthquake rocked the country's east.

Turkish television showed Ayse Yildiz, 35, and her two-year-old daughter Yusra being saved from a collapsed apartment building in Mustafa Pasa district. They had been trapped for 28 hours after the earthquake struck.

As overnight temperatures dropped to -5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit), emergency teams set up more than 9,500 tents for displaced residents and distributed some 17,000 hot meals, the Daily Mail reported.

Rescue teams concentrated their efforts in the Mustafa Pasa neighborhood of the city of Elazig and the nearby town of Sivrice, the closest residential area to the epicenter of Friday night's quake.

Nearly 600 aftershocks rocked the region as rescue teams worked. A magnitude 4.3 quake hit Puturge district in the neighboring Malatya province on Sunday morning, AFAD said.

Local mosques, schools, sports halls and student dormitories opened their doors last night for the hundreds left homeless after the 6.8-magnitude tremors hit at 1755 GMT.

The epicentre of the quake was about 340 miles east of the capital, Ankara. Various earthquake monitoring centers gave magnitudes ranging from 6.5 to 6.8.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelled his plans in Istanbul Saturday and went to Elazig to inspect the rescue efforts.

Erdogan visited the hardest-hit areas and attended the funeral of a mother and son killed in the quake.

He also attended a funeral for a woman and her son killed in the quake, which he described as a 'test' for Turkey.

Rescue workers were continuing to search for some 30 people buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Elazig province and neighboring Malatya, said Health Minister Fahrettin Koca. He warned that the death toll could rise.

Around 30 were believed to be trapped inside collapsed structures in Elazig , Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said.

Rescue teams from neighboring provinces were dispatched to the affected areas, working in the dark with floodlights in the freezing cold, and Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said troops were on standby to help.

Hundreds of residents were left homeless or with damaged homes.

Turkish media said the earthquake sent people running outdoors for safety.

 

 

In 1999, a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit Izmit in western Turkey, leaving more than 17,000 people dead including about 1,000 in the economic capital Istanbul.

In September, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake shook Istanbul, causing residents to flee buildings in the economic capital.

A magnitude 6 earthquake killed 51 people in Elazig in 2010.

In 2011 an earthquake struck the eastern city of Van and the town of Ercis, some 60 miles to the north, killing at least 523 people.

Most Visited in World
Top World stories
Top Stories