Turkish emergency services have managed to pull a mother and her ten-year-old son alive after 101 hours trapped under the rubble of a destroyed building in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, in the province of the same name, following the earthquakes registered on Monday in the south of the country, near the Syrian border.
After hours of work removing debris from a collapsed building in the Mevlana Halit Mahallesi district, search and rescue teams have found the whereabouts of Sebahat Varli, 32, and his son Serhat, 10, according to the Turkish state news agency Anatolia.
The mother and son, both with injuries, have been taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital for medical attention. Emergency services made use of thermal cameras and audio listening devices to find them.
With each passing hour it becomes more difficult for rescue services to find people alive, as the standard time a human being can remain without food or water intake in disasters like this is 72 hours.
The Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), under the Turkish Interior Ministry, has indicated that about 143,000 search and rescue team members — including international teams and NGOs — are working in the affected areas. Large quantities of rescue equipment, meals, basic necessities and psychosocial aid groups have been sent to the region.
The earthquake has caused more than 18,000 deaths in Turkey, 1,262 in the areas of Syria controlled by the government of Bashar al-Assad and another 1,970 in rebel-held areas of Idlib and Aleppo provinces (northwest), according to various balance sheets published during the last hours.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
