Dramatic rescues as death toll from quake tops 22,000

Rescuers have pulled several earthquake survivors from the remnants of buildings, including some who endured more than 100 hours trapped under concrete, as the death toll in Turkey and Syria rose to more than 22,000.

The survivors included six relatives who huddled in a small pocket under the rubble, a teenager who drank his own urine to survive and a four-year-old boy who was offered a jelly bean to calm him down as he was pulled out.

But the flurry of dramatic rescues – some broadcast live on Turkish television – could not obscure the overwhelming devastation of what Turkey’s president called one of the greatest disasters in his nation’s history.

Entire neighbourhoods of high-rise buildings have been reduced to twisted metal, pulverised concrete and exposed wires, and the magnitude 7.8 quake has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, with many more bodies yet to be recovered and counted.

Four days after the earthquake hit, relatives wept and chanted as rescuers pulled 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut from a basement in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicentre. He had been trapped for 94 hours, forced to drink his own urine to survive.

“Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance.

In Adiyaman, rescue crews pulled four-year-old Yagiz Komsu from the debris of his home, 105 hours after the quake struck. They later managed to rescue his mother, Ayfer Komsu, who survived with a fractured rib, according to HaberTurk television.

The crowd was asked not to cheer or applaud to avoid scaring the child, who was given a jelly bean, the station reported.

Elsewhere, HaberTurk television said rescuers had identified nine people trapped inside the remains of a high-rise apartment block in Iskenderun and pulled out six of them, including a woman who waved at onlookers as she was being carried away on a stretcher.

A married couple were pulled from the rubble in Iskenderun after spending 109 hours buried in a small crevice.

Meanwhile, a German team said it worked for more than 50 hours to free a woman from a collapsed house in Kirikhan.

In Kahramanmaras, two teenage sisters were saved, and video of the operation showed one emergency worker playing a pop song on his smartphone to distract them.

Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the chances of finding survivors are dimming.

The rescues yesterday provided fleeting moments of joy and relief amid the misery gripping the shattered region.

The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid.

The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The UN said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into north-western Syria yesterday.

The UN refugee agency estimates as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asmaa, visited survivors at the Aleppo University Hospital, according to Syrian state media.

Turkey’s disaster management agency said more than 19,300 people had been confirmed killed in the disaster so far in Turkey, with more than 77,000 injured.

More than 3,300 have been confirmed killed in Syria, bringing the total number of dead to more than 22,000.

BROUGHT TO SAFETY: Rescue teams use a crane to carry a survivor after she was rescued in Kahramanmaras.