Three people have been pulled from the rubble more than a week on from the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria last Monday.
Muhammed Cafer, 18, was rescued from the rubble of a building in southern Turkey on Tuesday in Adiyam province, CNN Turk said in what was the third rescue of the morning some 198 hours after last week’s devastating earthquake.
Rescue workers could be seen carrying him on a stretcher with an oxygen mask and IV bag attached, though he moved his fingers as he was carried away.
Earlier, rescuers pulled two brothers,17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and his brother, 21-year-old Baki Yeninar, from an apartment block in neighbouring Kahramanmaras province, according to the state-owned Anadolu news agency identified them as, who was rescued after him. Both were taken away in ambulances and their condition was unknown.
More than 37,000 people have died across southern Turkey and northwest Syria in the aftermath of the disaster and officials expect the toll to continue to rise.
The Turkish toll was 31,974 killed, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said on Tuesday. More than 5,814 have died in Syria according to a Reuters tally of reports based on figures from Syrian state media and a UN agency.
Survivors have been sleeping in the open and leaving earthquake-hit zones for fear of the damaged buildings, with many leaving with nothing, amid criticism over a lack of supplies and government assistance in the region.
“It is very hard … We will start from zero, without belongings, without a job,” said 22-year-old Hamza Bekry, a Syrian originally from Idlib who has lived in Hatay, in southern Turkey, for 12 years, told the Associated Press.
“Our house collapsed completely. Several of our relatives died, there are still ones under the rubble,” he added, as he prepared to follow his family to Isparta in southern Turkey.
More than 158,000 people are reported to have been evacuated from the disaster zone after one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern history.
“I do not have a lot of expectation from this life but the lives of our children are important,” Riza Atahan, from Hatay, told the Associated Press as he put his wife and daughter on a bus heading to safety some 300 km (186 miles) away.
In Syria, aid workers have spoken of people digging in the rubble with their bare hands to help rescue survivors and a lack of supplies for people, including those that are pregnant and breastfeeding.
Experts have said the window of opportunity for pulling people alive from the crushed buildings is coming to a close, due to freezing temperatures and the limits of the human body’s capability to survive without water.
