Rescue teams in Türkiye have pulled five members of a single family alive from the wreckage of their home, 129 hours after a powerful earthquake struck the region.
Rescuers on Saturday first extricated mother and daugher Havva and Fatmagül Aslan from among a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdağ, in Gaziantep province, HaberTürk reported.
The teams later reached the father, Hasan Aslan, but the man insisted that his other daughter, Zeynep, and son Saltık Buğra be saved first, the station said.
Hasan was brought out last. Rescuers cheered as the man was transported into an ambulance.
The dramatic rescue after 129 hours brings to nine the number of people rescued Saturday, despite diminishing hopes amid freezing temperatures. They included a disoriented 16-year-old and a 70-year-old woman.
“What day is it?” Kamil Can Agas, the teenager who was pulled out of the rubble in Kahramanmaras, asked his rescuers, according to NTV television.
Members of the mixed Turkish and Kyrgyz search teams embraced each other, as did the teenager’s cousins, with one of them calling out: “He is out, brother. He is out. He is here.”
The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake collapsed thousands of buildings, killing more than 24,000 people, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless. Another quake nearly equal in power and likely triggered by the first caused more destruction hours later.