More survivors found, as Turkey and Syria battle losses from ‘catastrophe of the century’

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On Saturday, rescue teams pulled more survivors, including entire families, from collapsed buildings although hopes faded as the death toll from the massive earthquake that struck a border region between Turkey and Syria five days ago exceeded 25,000.

Turkish television broadcast dramatic rescues, including that of the Narli family in central Kahramanmaraş 133 hours after the earthquake struck early Monday. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was rescued, and then her parents.

This followed the rescue of a family of five earlier in the day from a pile of rubble in the hardest-hit town of Nordağı, in Gaziantep province, Haberturk TV network reported. The rescuers cheered and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” As the last member of the family, the father, was taken to safety.

“No stone left standing” in some places

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during a tour of quake-hit cities, raised the death toll in Turkey to 22,327, bringing the total death toll across the region, including government and opposition-held areas in Syria, to 25,880.

Members of a rescue team work at the site of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey, on Saturday, as the search continues for survivors of Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria. (Kemal Aslan/Reuters)

Erdogan said the scale of the disaster is rare, both in terms of the size of the affected area and the number of people living there. He described the quake as the “catastrophe of the century” and said it struck an area 500 kilometers in diameter and inhabited by 13.5 million people in Turkey and an unknown number in Syria.

“In some parts of our settlements close to the fault line, we can say that there is almost no stone left,” he said earlier on Saturday from Diyarbakir.

However, today he brought one amazing rescue after another, numbering more than a dozen.

Melissa Olko, a woman in her 20s, was pulled from the rubble in the grove 132 hours after the earthquake, after another person was rescued at the same location at the same hour. Prior to her rescue, the police announced that people should not cheer or clap so as not to interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was covered with a thermal blanket on a stretcher. The rescuers were hugging.

Just an hour ago, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from the rubble in the town of Islahi, also in Gaziantep Province, and shortly after a 7-year-old girl was rescued in Hatay Province.

A glimmer of hope

Rescue operations brought a glimmer of joy amid days of massive devastation after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake, hours later causing thousands of buildings to collapse. Besides the people killed, more than 80,000 people have been injured and millions displaced.

Rescue workers work with a rescue dog as the search continues for survivors following Monday’s deadly earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on Saturday. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

Searches also produced severe disappointments. Rescuers reached a 13-year-old girl inside the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay province early Saturday and intubated her. Hurriyet newspaper said that she died before medical teams were able to amputate one of her limbs and free her from under the rubble.

Although experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors are rapidly diminishing. Rescuers have been turning to thermal cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign of the vulnerability of any remaining survivors.

watch | CBC News Crew Captures Live Rescue: On the Frontline of a Deadly Earthquake | CBC’s Briar Stewart and Chris Brown take us to the front lines of the rescue effort in Turkey to talk about the next steps in the mission and what support could come from Canada.

As aid continues to arrive, a group of 99 members of the Indian Army’s medical aid team has begun treating the injured in a makeshift field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun, where a main hospital has been demolished.

A man, Sukru Canpolat, was taken to hospital in a wheelchair, his left leg was badly injured with bruises, bruises and deep cuts.

In great pain, he said, he was rescued from his collapsed apartment building in the nearby city of Antakya within hours of the earthquake. However, after receiving basic first aid, he was released without receiving proper treatment for his injuries.

“I’m buried [everyone that I lost]Then I came here, said Canpolat, counting his dead relatives: “My daughter died, my brother died, my aunt and her daughter died, and her daughter-in-law,” who was eight and a half months pregnant, died.

A large temporary cemetery was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. Bulldozers and bulldozers dug holes in the field on the northeastern edge of town as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags continually arrived. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take pictures.

Hundreds of graves, no more than a meter apart, are marked with simple wooden boards set vertically in the ground.

temporary cemetery

A worker at Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, who did not wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media, said about 800 bodies were brought to the cemetery on Friday, its first day of operation. By midday on Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 people had been buried.

People are seen at a cemetery as they bury their loved ones who were victims of Monday’s earthquake in Adiyaman, Turkey, on Friday. (Emrah Gurel/The Associated Press)

“The people who are coming out of the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survived. Most of the people who are coming out now are dead, and they are coming here,” he said.

Temperatures have remained below freezing across the large area, and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but it still struggles to reach many of those in need.

The disaster has compounded the suffering in a region reeling from Syria’s 12-year-old civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to Turkey.

More than 5 million are left homeless

The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated aid delivery efforts. The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday, a day after an aid shipment scheduled before the disaster arrived.

A man sits on Saturday on a collapsed building in the rebel-held Syrian town of Jandris. (Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

The United Nations refugee agency has estimated that up to 5.3 million people are left homeless in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife visited the earthquake-wounded in a hospital in the coastal city of Latakia, which is a support base for the Syrian president.

Syrian state television said Assad and his wife Asma visited on Saturday morning Duha Nourallah, 60, and her son Ibrahim Zakaria, 22, who were pulled from the rubble the night before in the nearby coastal town of Jableh.

The official Syrian News Agency (SANA) stated that the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, arrived in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, today, Saturday, bringing with him 35 tons of medical equipment. He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment would arrive in the coming days.

The opposition Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said Saturday that it was “almost impossible to find people alive”.

The total death toll in the opposition-held area in northwest Syria reached 2,166, many of them women and children. The death toll in Syria has reached 3,533, although the 1,387 deaths reported in government-controlled parts of the country had not been updated in days.

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