Rescue teams in Turkiye on Saturday pulled to safety a family of five who survived inside their collapsed home for five days following a major earthquake in a sprawling border region of Turkiye and Syria. The death toll, however, was approaching 25,000.
The death toll in Turkiye and Syria from the earthquake that struck five days ago has surpassed 25,000.
"What day is it?" 16-year-old Kamil Can Agas asked his rescuers after he was pulled out of the rubble in Kahramanmaras, according to NTV television. Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors were quickly waning. Rescuers were shifting to thermal cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign of the weakness of any remaining survivors.
"I buried , then I came here," Canbulat said, counting his dead relatives: "My daughter is dead, my sibling died, my aunt and her daughter died, and the wife of her son" who was 8 1/2 months pregnant. "People who are coming out from the rubble now, it's a miracle if they survive. Most of the people that come out now are dead, and they come here," he said.
In Antakya, an international charity helping Syrian refugees in Turkiye has offered shelter to dozens in the grounds of an intact building on the city's edge.