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Quake survivors still being pulled out in 4th-day rescues in Türkiye

(Xinhua) 14:22, February 10, 2023

ISTANBUL, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Scenes of people being rescued from under rubble flooded social media and news channels on Thursday as search and rescue efforts enter their fourth day following catastrophic earthquakes in southern Türkiye.

Rescue teams from across Türkiye and around the world are still able to find survivors in the rubble of toppled buildings and pulled them out against all odds.

In Antalya, a city in southern Hatay Province, siblings 12-year-old Mahir, 8-year-old Hilal and 1-year-old Rami were recovered to safety after being buried under a collapsed building for 80 hours.

Video provided by Antalya municipality shows local firefighters pulling them out and loading them onto a stretcher.

Earlier that day, members of the National Medical Rescue Unit from the southeastern province of Hakkari had saved a seven-month-old baby who had been buried for 66 hours in Hatay.

Hatay, a province bordering Syria, was hit particularly hard by Monday's earthquakes, and many people are still waiting to be saved.

Istanbul municipality's search and rescue personnel have extracted 424 survivors there so far, according to a tweet shared by Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Thursday.

Meanwhile, in the worst-hit Kahramanmaras Province, the epicenter of the two deadly earthquakes that struck Türkiye and Syria on Monday, firefighters from the capital of Ankara have saved over 200 people, according to Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas.

Yavas also shared a video of Ankara firefighters saving a 25-year-old named Abdullah after 70 hours under rubble.

On the scene were not just Turkish search and rescue teams -- dozens of countries have sent rescuers to the affected areas. Garo Paylan, a member of parliament, shared photographs of a search and rescue team from Armenia working in the southeastern province of Adiyaman.

Meanwhile, similar videos of teams from Hungary, Spain, Greece, and Israel saving children were also being circulated.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that the death toll from earthquakes in the country has reached 16,546 and over 66,000 were injured.

(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)

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