New miraculous rescues continue to take place in Turkey. Three survivors of the earthquakes of February 6 have been found alive this Friday after having spent more than 260 hours under the rubble. They were located in the city of Antioquia (in the province of Hatay), one of the hardest hit by the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes, which have affected a region of about 100,000 square kilometers in the southeast of the country. Meanwhile, the official number of deaths in Turkey already amounts to 38,000 and more than 4,000 in Syria.
One of those rescued in Antioquia is Osman Halebiye, a 12-year-old boy from a Syrian family who remained buried under the rubble of a building in the Ekinci district, where the emergency teams, in extremely harsh conditions due to the constant aftershocks -which have already there are more than 4,700–, they have managed to locate him. In fact, during the day, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), under the Turkish Ministry of the Interior, reported an earthquake of magnitude 5.1 on the Richter scale in Hatay, at a depth of 9.26 kilometres. In total, there have been 4,734 aftershocks after the earthquakes on February 6.
Upon being rescued, the little boy assured rescuers that there were more people buried nearby. Already in the hospital, this surviving child was visited by the country’s Minister of Health, Fahrettin Koca.
In a neighboring neighborhood, Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, and Mustafa Avci, 34, were also rescued alive by emergency teams from a collapsed building in a northwestern district of Antioch. The two men and little Osman have spent 261 hours in the rubble, almost 11 full days.
The Turkish emergency service Afad has updated the death toll registered until last midnight, already confirming 38,044 victims, but it is a provisional balance, since various estimates predict that the final balance is close to or above 100,000.
The quake has also left more than 108,000 injured, a figure that includes all the people who have sought hospital care in connection with the disaster, and more than 216,000 people have left the affected provinces.
A new tragedy occurred this morning among these displaced persons. A Syrian family of seven people, including five children, who were rescued last week after the earthquakes in Turkey died this Friday due to the fire in the house where they had taken refuge after the destruction of their house.
According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, the family moved to the home of a relative in Konya after losing their home in the Turkish town of Nurdagi, one of the most affected by the earthquakes. The house, built with adobe, suffered a fire during the early hours of this Friday that caused the roof to collapse. The couple and their five children, aged between thirteen and four, died.
