Another child pulled out alive from rubble, 91 hours after Turkey earthquake

Search and rescue operations have been going on around the clock in the debris of five collapsed buildings. PHOTO: AFP

ISTANBUL (XINHUA, AFP, REUTERS) - Turkish rescue workers on Tuesday (Nov 3) rescued another child from under the debris of a building, one day after a three-year-old girl was pulled out alive from a collapsed building, local media reported.

The live footage of the NTV broadcaster showed rescue workers pulling the four-year-old girl out from the rubble on Tuesday, 91 hours after a strong earthquake hit Turkey's western province of Izmir.

Rescuers heard Ayda Gezgin's screams from under the rubble and managed to pull her out hours later, taking her out on a stretcher as emergency teams continued to search five destroyed apartment blocks for survivors.

As the child was pulled from the rubble, covered in dust but unhurt, one rescue worker hugged and kissed her, and some called "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

There was applause when the young girl, whose age was variously given as three or four years old, was carried away on a stretcher.

"She smiled, she was waiting for us," said Levent Onur, one of the rescue workers pulling Ayda out, adding the child had been stuck behind a washing machine which shielded her from injury.

"The name of our miracle after 91 hours is Ayda. Thank God," tweeted Cabinet minister Murat Kurum.

The Interior Ministry later said that Ayda's mother was found dead by rescuers shortly after her child's rescue.

Deputy Health Minister Muhammet Guven told reporters at the hospital where Ayda was taken that the child was in good health and that she was receiving treatment.

On Monday, a three-year-old girl was rescued from a collapsed building, nearly three days after the 6.6-magnitude quake hit the Aegean Sea off the Seferihisar district of Izmir last Friday.

Television footage showed the three-year-old, Elif Perincek, being pulled from the rubble and carried by rescue workers on a stretcher to an ambulance, 65 hours after the earthquake struck. Elif is now recovering in hospital.

Her two sisters and a brother were rescued along with their mother last Saturday, but one of the children subsequently died.

Search and rescue operations have been going on around the clock in the debris of five collapsed buildings in the province, added Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority.

More than 3,500 tents and 13,000 beds have been supplied to provide temporary shelter, according to the authority.

The earthquake has so far killed 102 people and injured 1,026. It was the deadliest in Turkey since the 2011 quake in the eastern city of Van, which killed more than 500 people.

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