Turkish earthquake deaths rise to 41 after teams pull more bodies from rubble

TURKISH EMERGENCY teams have recovered the bodies of the last two missing quake victims from the rubble of a collapsed building, raising the death toll from the powerful tremor that hit eastern Turkey to 41.

The magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck on Friday night also injured more than 1,600 others. At least 45 survivors were pulled out of the rubble alive.

Rescue teams yesterday drilled through the rubble in the eastern city of Elazig, trying to reach a missing 75-year-old woman and another person, as relatives waited nearby.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and Mehmet Gulluoglu, the head of the Turkish disaster management agency, later announced that their bodies were pulled out from the debris.

The body of a third missing person was pulled out of the same collapsed structure overnight.

Television footage showed scores of emergency workers gathered in a circle near the rubble to pray for the victims, before the search-and-rescue mission was formally called off. The quake destroyed 76 buildings and damaged more than 1,000 others, forcing survivors to take refuge in tents, mosques, schools, sports halls and student dormitories. Authorities warned people not to return to homes that could be unsafe. As overnight temperatures dropped to minus 5C, emergency teams set up more than 9,500 tents for displaced residents and distributed hot meals.

Over the weekend, rescuers pulled out Ayse Yildiz, 35, and her two-year-old daughter Yusra

from the rubble of another building in Elazig. They had been trapped for 28 hours. Turkey’s Emergency and Disaster Management Presidency said close to 4,000 workers and 22 dogs have been involved in the search and rescue operation since Friday.