After the devastating earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border area, the death toll has risen to more than 24,000. Many people are still missing under the rubble, but the helpers now recover almost nothing but corpses. But here and there there are still miraculous rescues: 115 hours after the disaster, a pregnant woman was pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in the Gaziantep region. However, the Austrian army had to suspend its rescue operations due to an increasingly difficult security situation.
“The expected success of saving a life bears no reasonable relationship to the security risk,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Kugelweis. “There is increasing aggression between groups in Turkey. Shots would have been fired,” he describes the dramatic situation. Together with numerous other aid organizations, the Austrian disaster response unit is now standing by in a base camp in the Turkish province of Hatay.
As Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay explained on Saturday evening, 67 people have been rescued alive from the rubble across the country in the past 24 hours. There are still touching individual fates with a happy ending. A pregnant woman has been pulled from the rubble in the Nurdagi district of Gaziantep province. A video captures the incredible moment when rescuers reach Zahide Kaya and carry her away on a stretcher.
Also in Gaziantep, helpers were able to uncover a nine-year-old girl – 108 hours after the earthquake. Tragically, both his parents and sister were dead by then. In Kahramanmaras, a 46-year-old man was rescued from the ruins of a seven-story building. He was buried for 112 hours.
However, such successful rescues are becoming increasingly rare – people, as a rule, cannot survive without water for more than three days, and there are also freezing temperatures in the disaster area. In Turkey, 20,665 dead and 80,052 injured have been recovered by the Ministry of Health. 3,500 people have died in Syria. These numbers are likely to increase dramatically as the number of missing people is still very high.
The earthquakes left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and 24.4 million Turks were affected by the earthquakes. Nearly 93,000 people have been evacuated from the earthquake zones, Turkish authorities said. More than 166,000 emergency services are involved in rescue and relief operations. Berlin is planning visa facilitation for people affected by the earthquake to enter Germany. “Many people in Germany have relatives in the disaster area and are very concerned about them,” said German Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir.
Source: Krone
I am Wallace Jones, an experienced journalist. I specialize in writing for the world section of Today Times Live. With over a decade of experience, I have developed an eye for detail when it comes to reporting on local and global stories. My passion lies in uncovering the truth through my investigative skills and creating thought-provoking content that resonates with readers worldwide.
