More than 23000 people have died and rescuers are still racing to pull survivors from beneath the rubble after the major earthquake that ripped through Turkey and Syria.
In Samandağ in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, a 10-day-old boy named Yagiz was retrieved from a ruined building overnight, while in Kırıkhan, German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman alive out of the rubble more than 104 hours after she was buried and carried her to a waiting ambulance.
A 10-year-old boy was also saved overnight with his mother in the Samandağ district of Hatay after being trapped for more than 90 hours, while in Diyarbakır in the east, 32-year-old Sebahat Varlı and her son, Serhat, were pulled out alive 100 hours after the first quake.
“Now I believe in miracles,” Steven Bayer, the International Search and Rescue team leader, said at the site. “You can see the people crying and hugging each other. It’s such a huge relief that this woman under such conditions came out so fit. It’s an absolute miracle.”
One of the strongest earthquakes to hit the region in a century shook residents from their beds at around 4 a.m. on Monday, sending tremors as far away as Lebanon and Israel. The epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude quake was 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) east of Nurdagi, in Turkey’s Gaziantep province, at a depth of 24.1 kilometers (14.9 miles), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. According to reports, a series of aftershocks have reverberated throughout the day. The largest, a major quake that measured 7.6 in magnitude, hit in Turkey about nine hours after the initial quake.
The quake that left destruction and debris on each side of the border, has left hundreds of thousands more people homeless and short of food in often sub-zero winter conditions.
In Samandağ in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, a 10-day-old boy named Yagiz was retrieved from a ruined building overnight, while in Kırıkhan, German rescuers pulled 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman alive out of the rubble more than 104 hours after she was buried and carried her to a waiting ambulance.
A 10-year-old boy was also saved overnight with his mother in the Samandağ district of Hatay after being trapped for more than 90 hours, while in Diyarbakır in the east, 32-year-old Sebahat Varlı and her son, Serhat, were pulled out alive 100 hours after the first quake.
“Now I believe in miracles,” Steven Bayer, the International Search and Rescue team leader, said at the site. “You can see the people crying and hugging each other. It’s such a huge relief that this woman under such conditions came out so fit. It’s an absolute miracle.”
One of the strongest earthquakes to hit the region in a century shook residents from their beds at around 4 a.m. on Monday, sending tremors as far away as Lebanon and Israel. The epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude quake was 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) east of Nurdagi, in Turkey’s Gaziantep province, at a depth of 24.1 kilometers (14.9 miles), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. According to reports, a series of aftershocks have reverberated throughout the day. The largest, a major quake that measured 7.6 in magnitude, hit in Turkey about nine hours after the initial quake.
The quake that left destruction and debris on each side of the border, has left hundreds of thousands more people homeless and short of food in often sub-zero winter conditions.
