Ankara (EFE).- While the death toll in Turkey has already exceeded 20,000, the rescue teams continue to find survivors this Saturday who had been under the rubble for more than 120 hours.
Masallah Çiçek, a 55-year-old woman, was rescued alive early Saturday morning from the ruins of her apartment in Diyarbakir, 122 hours after the earthquake that shook ten provinces in the country’s southeast on Monday.
The Anadolu news agency reports that the woman had injuries and has been hospitalized, while rescuers continued their work in search of another possible survivor under the same building.
70-year-old woman freed
Another rescue was broadcast live by Turkish television channels in the early morning, when a 70-year-old woman was freed alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Kahramanmaras, 121 hours after the earthquake.
However, hopes that these “miracles” will continue are diminishing with each passing minute and the death toll now stands at 20,318, with more than 80,000 injured, according to the latest count by the AFAD emergency situation agency.
Monday’s 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes were centered in Kahramanmaras province and affected more than 13 million people in 10 provinces. It is feared that tens of thousands of victims are still under the rubble in a region the size of a European country like Hungary.
Despite the fact that more than 100,000 rescuers and emergency personnel work in the area, its enormous size, the high degree of destruction, the more than a thousand registered aftershocks and the cold complicate the situation.
Search and rescue efforts are continuing in various locations in the hope of finding survivors, but in some areas rescue efforts have stopped and teams have begun to remove rubble.
