A three-year-old girl was taken out alive by rescue workers 65 hours after the earthquake in the Aegean Sea in the Turkish city of Izmir on Monday morning. The girl is reunited with her family. The rescue was broadcast live on television.
At least 81 people were killed in the earthquake in Turkey. Two people also died on the Greek island of Samos. Searches for survivors in Izmir are still ongoing.
The girl’s grandmother welcomed the rescue. “I am very happy. May God bless the rescuers. I am now reunited with Elif and she will soon see her mother and sisters again,” she told reporters. The girl’s mother and sisters were rescued 23 hours after the quake.
A few hours before the girl was rescued, rescuers also managed to rescue a fourteen-year-old boy alive. He was immediately taken to the emergency room. According to Turkish state broadcaster Anadolu, 105 people have been rescued since the quake on Friday afternoon.
Turkey is sheltering survivors in thousands of tents
To provide temporary shelter to people whose homes have been destroyed, Turkey has set up more than 3,000 tents and 13,000 beds. A total of 940 people have been injured, according to the Turkish disaster response organization AFAD. Seven hundred people have been released from hospital, eight are still in intensive care.
Several fault lines of tectonic plates run through Turkey, causing many earthquakes in the region. In 1999, 18,000 people died in two major earthquakes in northwestern Turkey. The epicenter of Friday’s earthquake was in the Aegean Sea northwest of Samos and had a magnitude of 6.9.
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