Quake survivor, 70, rescued as toll rises in Turkey

IZMIR, Turkey — Rescue workers inwestern Turkey extricated a 70-year-old man from a collapsed building Sunday, some 34 hours after a strong earthquake in the Aegean Sea struck Turkey and Greece, killing at least 75 people and injuring close to1,000.

The man was pulled out of the rubble overnight and doing well at a hospital, according to the Turkish health minister. The minister tweeted that the survivor, Ahmet Citim, told him, “I never lost hope.” The operation that saved Citim was the latest in a series of remarkable rescues after the Friday afternoon earthquake.

But on the third day since the disaster, searchand-rescue teams appeared to be finding more bodies than survivors in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city. They continued searching in eight toppled buildings, but work was paused at one when authorities determined the damaged structure next door was also at risk of falling, forcing rescuers and people waiting outside to retreat.

The earthquake was centered in the Aegean northeast of the Greek island of Samos. Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) raised the death toll Sunday in Izmir province to 73. The agency said 961 people were injured in Turkey, with more than 220 still receiving treatment Sunday.

The earthquake also killed two teenagers on Samos and injured at least 19 other people on the island.

There was some debate over the magnitude of the earthquake. The U.S. Geological Survey rated it 7.0, while the Istanbul’s Kandilli Institute put it at 6.9 and AFAD at 6.6.

The quake triggered a small tsunami that hit Samos and the Seferihisar district of Izmir, drowning one elderly woman.